SHOPPERS have been left bereft as a major retailer with hundreds of branches gears up to close one of its stores.
“Closing down” signs have appeared at the Shoe Zone shop in Kilmarnock, East Ayrshire, Scotland.
It appears a final closing date is yet to be announced by the chain, which runs over 330 locations across the UK, reports the Daily Record.
We have contacted Shoe Zone to find out the exact date the branch will be shutting.
The Kilmarnock closure is not part of the swathe of closures announced by Shoe Zone last year.
News of the store is shutting has been met with devastation from shoppers and locals alike.
Read more in Store Closures
One said: “All high streets are dying and that’s thanks to online shopping.”
A second added: “Every town centre and high street throughout the country has shops going to the wall.”
Meanwhile, a third chimed in: “Kilmarnock has been on the decline for a long time.”
And a fourth commented: “Soon be no shops.”
It’s not the first Shoe Zone shop to shut in recent months, as the retailer closes a string of stores across the UK.
The chain is also closing a branch in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, according to local news reports.
It is not clear when exactly the store is pulling down its shutters.
Shoe Zone’s Aberdeenshire branch will also close for good in June, although again an exact date has not yet been confirmed.
The retailer also shut 13 stores in 2023, in locations including Bristol, Portsmouth, Leicestershire and Suffolk.
It has plans to close a branch in Inverness, Scotland, over the coming months too, although it’s not clear exactly when.
However, as is common practice for retailers, Shoe Zone has also been opening a swathe of shops across the UK.
Chains often close sites and reopen them to drive business in areas where they are more in demand.
Last year, Shoe Zone confirmed to The Sun it had opened eight stores over 12 months.
The retailer pulled up the shutters on branches in Maidstone, Bristol, South Shields, Gravesend and Colchester.
OTHER HIGH STREET NEWS
A number of retailers have been shutting stores across the UK in a hammer blow to shoppers.
Wilko, The Body Shop and Ted Baker have closed hundreds of branches between them after falling into administration.
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. 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.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase 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.
Other retailers, including Poundland, Lidl and Iceland have closed single shops here and there too.
But plenty of chains have been expanding their presence on the high street and across retail parks.
Poundland, Lidl and Aldi have all been expanding, pouncing on shoppers’ appetites for cheap and good quality produce.
Health and beauty retailer Superdrug recently said it wants to open 25 new branches across the UK too.
Asda has been opening hundreds of convenience stores in recent months as it looks to rival major players Tesco and Sainsbury’s.
And B&M plans to open “not less than” 45 brand new stores across the UK in each of the next two consecutive years.
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