A BIG high street fashion chain with over 250 stores is closing another shop within days.
River Island will close down its branch at Vicar Lane Shopping Centre in Chesterfield.
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The popular fashion brand will have its final trading day at the end on Saturday, April 19.
In the lead-up to the closure, the store has unveiled a closing down sale, offering a generous 30% off everything.
Sharing the news on its Facebook page, the Vicar Lane Shopping Centre announced: “Get 30% off full price and sale items, in-store ONLY.
“Don’t miss out, the store closes for good at 17.30pm on Saturday April 19, so now’s the time to grab a bargain!”
It comes just days after the retailer announced that its store in Willow Place, Corby, will also close at the end of April.
It marks the end of a near decade end stint at the shopping centre, having first opened in the retail outlet in 2007.
New Look will also close it’s two-storey shop in the Willow Place Shopping Centre on June 1.
The store will close in just shy of two months time, giving shoppers a short while to say their goodbyes.
Meanwhile the future of the WHSmith store located within the outlet also hangs in the balance.
The brand itself is set to disappear off the high street forever after all 500 of its shops were sold in a £76million deal last month.
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 street
Beales, 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.
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