A MAJOR retailer with 89 branches is set to shut a popular store in weeks ahead of a raft of closures.
Jewellery chain Beaverbrooks is closing its branch at the Whitgift Centre in Croydon on April 6.
Beaverbrooks is closing a branch in Croydon within weeks[/caption]
The store is one of seven sites shutting across March and April, as exclusively revealed by The Sun.
Anna Blackburn, managing director for Beaverbrooks, said customers’ next nearest branches are in Stratford, London and the Bluewater and Lakeside shopping centres in Kent and Essex, respectively.
She added: “I’d like to share a heartfelt thank you to our Croydon community and every colleague and customer that has been a part of our journey in Croydon over the past 30 years.”
Shoppers and locals will no doubt be gutted to hear the store is closing for good in a matter of weeks.
It has garnered a stream of positive Google reviews, including from one shopper who branded the store “one of the last best places in Croydon”.
Another said the customer service team “could not be more polite, professional and understanding”.
It comes after Beaverbrooks told The Sun it will close seven branches across March and April.
The more than 100-year-old company said it is trimming its store estate following a review.
Ms Blackburn said: “Due to a range of factors, there are seven stores that are unfortunately no longer commercially viable, and after careful and thorough consideration we have made the difficult decision to close them.”
The stores are dotted across the UK, including five in England: Whitgift (Croydon), High Wycombe, Huddersfield, Birmingham Fort and Sutton Coldfield.
One in Dundee and another in East Kilbride, both in Scotland, will also shutter from next month.
All seven branches will remain open and operating as normal until they close for good.
Ms Blackburn said Beaverbrooks would try to retain as many staff from the affected branches as possible.
She added that the multi award-winning business plans to open a new store in Harrogate in Spring while some of its branches are under renovation.
In its most recent accounts, Beaverbrooks said profitability in the 53 weeks to March 2, 2024, had “reduced considerably” despite an increased turnover.
This, it said, was in part due to increasing worker’s pay and property refurbishments and repairs.
Turnover is the total amount of money made by a business over a certain period of time.
The seven upcoming closures come after Beaverbrooks shuttered a store in Romford, London, last March.
It’s worth bearing in mind, retailers often close branches and open them in other areas based on customer demand and trends.
RETAIL SECTOR STRUGGLES
The retail sector has been hit hard in recent years as the trend towards online shopping intensifies.
The most recent data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows online retail sales increased from 5% of all retail sales in 2008 to 27% in 2022.
Shoppers have also been feeling the pinch in recent years following sky-high inflation which has dented their wallets and purses.
It has led to a number of major retailers having to close stores to shore up their finances.
Boots announced in 2023 it would shut 300 of its branches in a bid to slim down its high street presence while WHSmith is in talks to sell off 500 of its stores.
Jewellery chains have been forced into closing branches as well.
Claire’s has closed a number of stores in recent years, including in Gillingham, Nuneaton and Newton Abbott.
T H Baker also shuttered a branch in Cambridge in May last year.
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.
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