British High Street Death List 2020

[Blue Jam]

I once knocked over a display Le Crueset casserole running around Debenhams in Merry Hill while my Mum and Dad talked to a rep. It broke one of the handles off. They waived the cost after my parents apologised profusely for their dickhead son, but I gather those things are quite expensive

Quite overpriced though. They're always ending up in TK Maxx at a massive discount.

[Ferris]

I once knocked over a display Le Crueset casserole running around Debenhams in Merry Hill while my Mum and Dad talked to a rep. It broke one of the handles off. They waived the cost after my parents apologised profusely for their dickhead son, but I gather those things are quite expensive so really perhaps I had a part in their downfall.

28 I was, etc.

They're like 300 quid new.

We got ours from the Canadian version of tk maxx for about 50 quid because it was a slightly wrong shade of blue or something. Then replaced it with a massive cheapo cast iron enamel pan which has been an absolute workhorse for years.

[Pseudopath]

Cath Kidston FUCKED. Probably in a twee way: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-cath-kidston-verge-administration-21813452

Best news all week.

[Blumf]

Ms Kidston described the store as like "Marmite". "People either love it and want a little bit of it very much, or want to stab us," she said.

Over the past two financial years the company had lost more than £27million.

Mostly stabbing then.

[Blue Jam]

Where arenTK Maxx going to keep all this new stock? They'll be opening a million new shops at this rate.

[shiftwork2]

Cath Kidston FUCKED. Probably in a twee way: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-cath-kidston-verge-administration-21813452

Best news all week.

Oh WANKING.  PLEASE

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Fjallraven Kanken next please

Next for GETTING LIQUIDATED

[Blue Jam]

Have The Kooples gone under yet? The Embra branch closed a while back.

[BlodwynPig]

Fjallraven Kanken next please

Next for GETTING LIQUIDATED

raven raske over icen

or something

[touchingcloth]

Cath Kidston FUCKED. Probably in a twee way: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/breaking-cath-kidston-verge-administration-21813452

Best news all week.

After this and Laura Ashley, Emma Bridgwater's pants must be well shitted.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

An expeditionary force has been commissioned to find out. A bump map of sharted areas will be rendered and published at noon tomorrow.

[touchingcloth]

Reports indicate that expeditioners are making frequent stops at Lush to replenish their nostrils. Ill advisedly.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Not quite high street but the scourge of the Labour left, the Jewish Chronicle has gone into liquidation.

Friends of Corbyn Jonathan Freedland and Hadley Freeman have been quick to express their grief.

You do really wonder whether Corbyn was cursed. Brexit fucks a golden opportunity to win power, and then a devastating virus rips through the very heart of capitalism 2 months after his offer to reform it is rejected.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44957906

Some pretty horrible journalism.

[steveh]

AMC, owners of Odeon cinemas, look like they may go bankrupt: https://www.thewrap.com/amc-theatres-bankruptcy-likely-pandemic/.

[Blue Jam]

Oasis and Warehouse struggling under the 'vid:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52285231

[BlodwynPig]

Oasis and Warehouse struggling under the 'vid:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52285231

Is it still the early 2000s? FFS, bin that bunch of Love Actually level tepidness

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

While it is enjoyable to wave goodbye to some of these tired brands, unless the government drastically reform land law, the same underlying issue will exist on the high street, that major corporations and very small independents are competing often for the same space. The landlord opts for the more stable, higher paying option who then moves in, undercuts all the competition and drives them out of business. Then they get lazy, fail to reform their offer and the internet eats them alive (unless they are a major chain coffee shop or other business where internet trading isn't an interfering factor)

It would be great to get to the point where 'the high street' is regulated to ensure it serves a sustainable community need, just as it would be for pubs to be freed of the pubco tie.

[Ferris]

While it is enjoyable to wave goodbye to some of these tired brands, unless the government drastically reform land law, the same underlying issue will exist on the high street, that major corporations and very small independents are competing often for the same space. The landlord opts for the more stable, higher paying option who then moves in, undercuts all the competition and drives them out of business. Then they get lazy, fail to reform their offer and the internet eats them alive (unless they are a major chain coffee shop or other business where internet trading isn't an interfering factor)

It would be great to get to the point where 'the high street' is regulated to ensure it serves a sustainable community need, just as it would be for pubs to be freed of the pubco tie.

I've never understood the landlord mentality to keep cranking the rates up and get 100% of nothing after all the business fail, vs a lower sustainable rate.

It isn't the 1880s, shopfronts don't have any kind of monopoly (the opposite, in fact) so there's no leverage to keep doing this. Stores will either fold, or raise their prices to compensate and everyone will just shop online.

It should be rate fixed as a public utility. The state of some major thoroughfares near me is a disgrace, must be half vacant on some pretty prime real estate and the only open businesses are major corporations that don't give a fig about the cost of local rents. That said, even some major retailers are leaving the downtown core (New Era/Converse/Nike) because the rents are so absurd.

No idea how that is sustainable for anyone.

[Ferris]

And to be boring a minute*, myself and a friend were considering leaving our jobs, borrowing some money and opening a small hole in the wall brewery about 2 years ago.

We spoke to some commercial landlords and realized we'd be in the hole about $120k before we could even open, and with rent we'd need to be selling beer last some absurd rate to stay afloat on starvation wages and that was basically the end of it. Now we have small kids and don't want to borrow eye watering sums just to have a business go under.

Interestingly a "craft" brewery opened near the spot we were looking at, but it is under the Anheuser-Busch-SAB-Miller-Coors umbrella and headquartered in Leuven, Belgium. They can afford to gamble away $120k, but smaller independent businesses can't. The homogenization of the high street. The commercializations of Beige. It is coming for us all.

_{*just a minute? haha lmao}

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Politicians even slightly reforming that would be such an ideological admission of failure it would feel to them as though the whole house was falling down. One can only hope there is a tipping point, as with late communism where the truth just cannot be denied.

I do feel most sympathetic to small towns where their marketplace and high street is so integral to their identity, whereas a city can perhaps lean back on other aspects - sports teams, a music scene, great parks and monuments etc. I even did my A-Level Geography coursework in Hull and Scunthorpe for christ's sake, and that was right in the boom years. Scunthorpe was dead on its necrotic arse even then.

Sorry to hear about your brewery idea not getting off the ground. Obviously location is such a crucial thing and many with your idea end up with a compromise situation - ie - they would get involved in a joint venture with someone/thing that wanted to open a bar or restaurant around there.

[Ferris]

Agree on the political/ideological reasons behind it all.

We went through a few funding models towards the end to see if it was viable (selling shares to people and running a collective with voting rights on batches, branding, styles etc was my favourite but got too complicated) then we both had kids around the same time and that was it really.

Location is the pisser. You can locate in the middle of nowhere and die slow, or you can go somewhere halfway-close to downtown and never get off the ground in the first place. I mention it only because I imagine this is what kills a lot of independent businesses before they even get going. Though maybe they all get by on etsy and I'm an old stick in the mud.

I'll stop clogging up the thread now.

[Blue Jam]

Re: "tired brands", I can't remember the last time I shopped at Oasis or Warehouse, but at the same time I don't want to emerge blinking into the sunlight to find the high street consists of nothing but Sports Direct and Wetherspoons.

I'm already brewing my own beer, shame I've always been absolutely crap at sewing. Perhaps by the time this is over we'll all be wearing hair shirts and eating rats on sticks and drinking our own piss. Even Mike Ashley.

[touchingcloth]

You wanted to make a brewery on the high street? Or have I misunderstood?

[Dewt]

AMC, owners of Odeon cinemas, look like they may go bankrupt: https://www.thewrap.com/amc-theatres-bankruptcy-likely-pandemic/.

Oh wow AMC and Odeon are the same thing? They're just AMC here.

[imitationleather]

The reason breweries rarely get off the ground is because they're too pissed from drinking it all themselves.

[Blue Jam]

It was in a railway arch, wasn't it Ferris?

;)

[touchingcloth]

Oh wow AMC and Odeon are the same thing? They're just AMC here.

They have AMC branded cinemas in the UK. I didn't actually know they owned Odeon, so I imagine it must be a relatively recent buyout, or else one of those things where they bought up another business so they could run one as a "premium" version or sutin. No way which one would be classed as premium, though.

[Ferris]

You wanted to make a brewery on the high street? Or have I misunderstood?

No, I didn't explain that very well. I was moaning about commercial landlords and the silly rates they charge businesses (particularly on high streets) which ends up knackering independent (and increasingly, non independent) businesses. Then I ranted about my own experience with the pricks, and in a tangential way about why independent businesses will always be at a disadvantage.

The homogenization and eventual death of the high street, with my own quasi related story in there (but I'm not bitter or anything).

The reason breweries rarely get off the ground is because they're too pissed from drinking it all themselves.

No comment

It was in a railway arch, wasn't it Ferris?

...no comment.

[Ferris]

Oh wow AMC and Odeon are the same thing? They're just AMC here.

Stupid question - are they the Walking Dead telly channel people? Or is that a different lot?

[Pseudopath]

Stupid question - are they the Walking Dead telly channel people? Or is that a different lot?

Nah, separate companies. AMC Theatres (which started out American Multi-Cinema) was founded 100 years ago, but the TV station AMC (originally American Movie Classics) has only been going since 1984.