1 month ago
8 
POUNDLAND is set to close multiple stores next month, while its owner continues to search for a buyer to rescue the ailing brand.
Three shops are scheduled to shut permanently before the end of May, with an additional store also set to shut its doors, though its exact closing date remains uncertain.
AlamyLast month, its parent company Pepco is said to have hired advisory firm Teneo to oversee the sale of the Poundland brand[/caption]
The Poundland branch located at Clapham Junction railway station will be the first to cease trading, closing for good on Friday, May 2.
A closing down sign posted inside the shop read: “We’re closing May 2.
“Don’t worry, we have another great store in the Southside Shopping Centre near Specsavers.”
A Poundland spokesperson addes: “We know how disappointing our closure at Clapham Junction will be to customers and we looking forward to welcoming them to our store nearby at the Southside shopping centre in Wandsworth.”
It draws a line under a near three year stint in the busy London train station, having first opened back in 2022.
Pepco, the parent company of Poundland, previously confirmed to The Sun that it will also be closing a branch in the Belle Valle shopping centre in Liverpool on May 6.
Meanwhile, Poundland is preparing to close its store in Brackla, Wales.
The branch is set to cease trading on May 24, giving shoppers just over a month to bid farewell.
In another setback for high street shoppers, Poundland is also shutting its branch in the St George’s Centre in Gravesend, Kent.
However, the retailer has yet to confirm the exact date of the closure.
Just last month, Poundland was forced to shut its Belfast branch after the Connswater Shopping Centre was placed into receivership.
The store closed its doors at the end of March, following a major closing-down sale.
Back in October, residents of Maidenhead were similarly dismayed when their local Poundland branch closed.
This came in addition to other closures, including its Sutton Coldfield store on October 5 and the Macclesfield branch last August, the latter closing due to the inability to secure a new lease agreement.
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.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
What is happening at Poundland?
Last month, Poundland’s parent company, Pepco, enlisted advisory firm Teneo to oversee the potential sale of its UK business.
This decision follows Pepco’s announcement that it is exploring “all strategic options” to separate Poundland from its portfolio of brands.
The Polish-based group has hinted that it may shift its focus towards its more profitable operations across Europe.
Pepco previously warned that rising costs, including increases to employer national insurance contributions (NICs) and the national minimum wage, will significantly impact its bottom line.
Late last year, it was revealed that Poundland’s profits had plunged by £641million in the year leading up to September.
Executives attributed the decline to sluggish sales and a bleak outlook, compounded by measures introduced by Chancellor Rachel Reeves.
A spokesperson also said the huge loss was “due to a non-cash impairment at Poundland that relates to the acquisition of the UK chain in 2016”.
This essentially means the business’s value has dropped due to expectations of reduced future cash flows.
More recently, Poundland reported a 9.3% decline in revenue for the three months ending in December, adding further strain to the troubled retailer.
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.
Bengali (Bangladesh) · 
English (United States) ·