2 weeks Ago By James Flanders
A MUCH-loved town centre store will bring its shutters down for the final time next week.Fern & Ivy, a nursery specialising in houseplants and pots, located in Cirencester, in the heart of the Cotswolds, is set to close its doors permanently on Saturday, April 26.FERN & IVY PLANTSIt’s important to remember that retailers often open and close stores for a variety of reasons[/caption]A sign in the window of the shop now reads: “Thank you so much for the last three and a half years.
“We’ve enjoyed being part of the community and meeting so many wonderful people along the way.“Fern & Ivy will continue – it’s just the physical shop that’s closing – so please follow our social media accounts to join us in the next steps of our business journey.”In March, owner Kate said on the retailer’s Facebook page: “After three and a half years of running our lovely little shop in Cirencester, it’s time for a change!“At the end of April, we’ll be closing our physical shop – but don’t worry, this isn’t goodbye, the end of a chapter, but not the end of the book!“As many of you will know, this has not been any easy decision (or process!) but we don’t need a physical store to continue being wonderful.
We’ll still be here, bringing you the best plants through our website, subscription service (which will expand soon!) and our workshops, which will continue, but in a slightly different way, we are working on that!”“I want to say a huge thank you to you, the incredible Fern & Ivy community, for supporting the shop over the years.”It’s important to remember that retailers often open and close stores for a variety of reasons, and these decisions don’t necessarily reflect financial difficulties.For instance, a retailer may choose to close a shop if there’s another nearby location that performs better, or they might relocate to a site with higher footfall, such as a busy retail park.
Alternatively, they may decide to shift their focus entirely to online operations.Therefore, store closures alone are not always a reliable indicator of a business’s financial health.Why are retailers closing shops?EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.
21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Carpetright, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Paperchase, Ted Baker, The Body Shop, Topshop and Wilko to name a few.What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.Other shops leaving the high streetBeales, one of Britain’s oldest department stores, has launched a closing down sale before it shuts its last remaining shop after more than 140 years.The company will shut its branch in Poole’s Dolphin Centre on May 31.
The sale includes fashion, furniture, gifts and cosmetics, being sold for up to 70% off.Beales chief executive Tony Brown blamed the “devastating impact” of the rise in national insurance contributions and the higher minimum wage for the store closure.Meanwhile, high street fashion chain New Look has begun to close stores as it scales back its UK footprint.
It is understood to be shutting nearly 100 stores – equivalent to around a quarter of its 364 shops.Stores in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, St Austell, Cornwall and Porth, Rhondda Cynon Taf have launched closing down sales.Reports suggest that the company has been forced to accelerate the pace of store closures due to tax changes in the Autumn Budget.
Meanwhile, Huttons in London will shut its store in the Putney Exchange due to excessive energy costs.The gift shop became a local icon after it opened in the 1990s..
