The death of the high street.

[London424]

janesmith1950 said:

I doubt the net margin was particularly high in the first place. An overall increase in costs of 4.5% could easily be the difference between viability or otherwise.

Assuming none of those costs were passed on in higher prices of course.

[Shakermaker]

[quote=gizlaroc]
This is why an increase to £10 an hour, £23,400 pa for a 45 hour week, /quote]

Why do you quote a 45 hour week? Seems an odd number to use as the baseline

[kev1974]

200 branches of Boots placed under review for possible closure, by owners Walgreens

https://news.sky.com/story/boots-plots-hundreds-of...

[anonymous-user]

kev1974 said:

200 branches of Boots placed under review for possible closure, by owners Walgreens

https://news.sky.com/story/boots-plots-hundreds-of...

Bit of an institution

[anonymous-user]

techiedave said:

Bit of an institution

Another one that I can't remember buying anything from for at least 10 years

[Bullett]

Is Wickes on the way out?

We had great service in there 2 years ago with a bathroom refit and went back on Saturday for another. No staff around and nearly every suite in the showroom had "not currently available" on it. The whole store looked shabby and understocked.

[eltawater]

Bullett said:

Is Wickes on the way out?

We had great service in there 2 years ago with a bathroom refit and went back on Saturday for another. No staff around and nearly every suite in the showroom had "not currently available" on it.

Doubt it. They're part of Travis Perkins group who have quite a few brands you may be familiar with.

https://www.travisperkinsplc.co.uk/our-businesses....

Bullett said:

The whole store looked shabby and understocked.

They've always been like that

[Piersman2]

Bullett said:

Is Wickes on the way out?

We had great service in there 2 years ago with a bathroom refit and went back on Saturday for another. No staff around and nearly every suite in the showroom had "not currently available" on it. The whole store looked shabby and understocked.

Would that be in Reading? If not, the one in Reading is exactly the same.

[Bullett]

Bracknell.

I know they've been rocking the 'working depot' thing for a while but this really felt unloved.

I found they were part of TPG, found an article on bad results from last year for Wickes but not much else. The summary was that Wickes was letting the group down, doesn't look like they've managed a turnaround as yet.

[red_slr]

My local one seems to be running with about 3 members of staff. I cant see them lasting. Would be better if they made it into a tool station TBH. At least they stock a much bigger range. A Screwfix just opened near by and that's busy all the time.

[Helicopter123]

kev1974 said:

200 branches of Boots placed under review for possible closure, by owners Walgreens

https://news.sky.com/story/boots-plots-hundreds-of...

Around 8% or the branch network?

Likely to be more of a tidying up of the portfolio rather than a failing business model?

[gizlaroc]

gizlaroc said:

This is why an increase to £10 an hour, £23,400 pa for a 45 hour week,

Shakermaker said:

Why do you quote a 45 hour week? Seems an odd number to use as the baseline

That is what I work, so presumed that was pretty much the normal?

I have always been in retail, tends to be 8.45am to open for 9am and then close at 5.30pm so usually out by 5.45pm.

Edited by gizlaroc on Tuesday 28th May 17:16

[Burwood]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

Funny you say that about Boots. Waked into one in Windsor of all places. Small town. The store was huge, couldn't find anything it was so vast. It must have been 15-20k sq feet. Not a chance they make money from places like that.

[anonymous-user]

If it were a retailer without the pharmacy I'd imagine Boots as a shopping destination would be toast by now.

Not sure they have a great deal of brand goodwill with the younger generation, either.

They did make a lot of small-town pharmacists very wealthy when they went on a shopping spree buying up the one man bands and small regionals.

[Twig62]

As always I feel for the Boots employees who lose their jobs however it must be 20 years since I needed to buy anything in one of their shops.

[saaby93]

Burwood said:

Funny you say that about Boots. Waked into one in Windsor of all places. Small town. The store was huge, couldn't find anything it was so vast. It must have been 15-20k sq feet. Not a chance they make money from places like that.

They do seem to have a huge floor space vs customers ratio - do they make it up on prescriptions?

[biggles330d]

We can all blame this or that for the decline but as with everything, its the market that shapes things. Collectively we have all started to make different choices in how we buy stuff be that based on price, convenience, choice or whatever. The inevitable outcome of that is business based on the traditional high street presence simply don't have sufficient turnover or profit to be viable.

We can blame landlords, blame the government, blame taxes, blame parking policies, blame retailer consolidation and the emergence of mega-chains to drive down cost and squeeze out the independent or whatever but next time you're online clicking to buy something and have it delivered you're making a choice that delivers another nail in the high street coffin. No point in lamenting the high street's demise when you don't use it or believe its someone elses problem to fix.

Personally, I try to buy from the high street. Its usually more expensive and I have less choice but these guys need my effort much more than Amazon needs my money.

Long term we need to mix residential and retail together again to bring life back into the town centre. The past model of zoning areas and only allowing segregated use may have been right before, but today it's a policy that's effectively hollowing out the centre of our cities.

[menousername]

biggles330d said:

We can all blame this or that for the decline but as with everything, its the market that shapes things. Collectively we have all started to make different choices in how we buy stuff be that based on price, convenience, choice or whatever. The inevitable outcome of that is business based on the traditional high street presence simply don't have sufficient turnover or profit to be viable.

We can blame landlords, blame the government, blame taxes, blame parking policies, blame retailer consolidation and the emergence of mega-chains to drive down cost and squeeze out the independent or whatever but next time you're online clicking to buy something and have it delivered you're making a choice that delivers another nail in the high street coffin. No point in lamenting the high street's demise when you don't use it or believe its someone elses problem to fix.

Personally, I try to buy from the high street. Its usually more expensive and I have less choice but these guys need my effort much more than Amazon needs my money.

Long term we need to mix residential and retail together again to bring life back into the town centre. The past model of zoning areas and only allowing segregated use may have been right before, but today it's a policy that's effectively hollowing out the centre of our cities.

The strength of (most) out of town malls would suggest that parking costs are a huge causal factor in those changing behaviours. The high street is not in trouble because we changed, we changed because the high street is in trouble.

Local authorities have doubled down on the stupid, and it is no longer an expensive hassle to go do what you want to do - its an expensive hassle to go find out what what you want is no longer there, what you enjoyed is no longer (time) permitted.

Mixed use retail and residential i am not sure will work. It will only support retail needed by the residents - small convenience stores or express super markets. There will be glitzy ideas of middle class suburbanites and a cafe bar culture at planning approval stage, but it will not support that and the retail space will turn into pizzas and kebabs. Parking will largely be permit-only with one allocated space for every multi-bedroom unit, therefore entirely insufficient. People visiting from outside to shop or eat? I cannot see it unfortunately.

[eltawater]

I don't think most of the posters on this thread fit into the core demographics of Boots on the high street

It's quite a useful destination for:

• Parents of young children (toys, baby food, vitamins, ointments etc)

• Make up counters

• Foreign holiday supplies (sunscreens, sunglasses etc)

• Photo printing

• The lunchtime office food rush

as well as the usual Pharmacy prescriptions. Don't forget there's almost always at least 1 Boots airside at major UK airports where you can bag a cheapish bottle of water and a sandwich compared to some of the hideously overpriced duty free shops.

Yes, you can get quite a few of these things at a large Tesco etc but quite often the range is very limited to a few aisles of products compared to a typical medium sized Boots.

[anonymous-user]

Over the years
I bought pile cream from them
Baby wipes
nappies
A Philips 22" TV
Several records such as Queens "the Game" and the American import Deep Purple "When we rock we rock and when we roll we roll"