A CITY centre shop has closed for the last time but the space has already been earmarked to be taken over by another retailer.
Smiggle in Chapel Walk, formerly Crowngate, in Worcester has now ceased trading in the city.
The stationery store started advertising an end-of-lease sale earlier this month in an attempt to clear stock ahead of its closing.
The store’s last day of trading was June 25.
It has been revealed that the shop unit will be refurbished and reopen under a new retailer, according to Worcester News.
Further details though have not yet been released.
Earlier this month, the Smiggle branch in Coney Street, York, also closed its doors for the final time.
A 50% discount sale had been launched to help shift stock before the store closed for good.
It was reported in YorkshireLive that the decision to close the children’s store came after the landlord decided not to renew the lease.
However it is not all bad news as a new Smiggle branch is set to open in York Designer Outlet this July.
It comes as the Australian business has announced plans to close a number of other stores across the UK.
A Cwmbran Shopping Centre will pull down its shutters for the final time in August.
Meanwhile two other branches closed in back in May.
A store in the Eastgate Shopping Centre, Inverness, shut its doors on May 21.
While a store in the Darwin Centre, Shrewsbury, closed on May 25.
In January 2024, the brand also closed a site in Dundee, Scotland.
HIGH STREET STRUGGLES
Smiggle is not the only retailer struggling on the high street amid the surge of online shopping and weaker household budgets.
Hobbycraft shut nine stores on June 21 after launching closing down sales.
Dobbies has also closed a slew of garden centres across the UK this year.
The Centre for Retail Research is predicting more than 17,000 retail shops will shut in 2025 too.
The centre has forecast a rise in closures after a hike to employer National Insurance contributions and the national minimum wage which took effect in April.
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.”
