Is Britain’s high street becoming unfashionable?

With around 14 shops closing a day, is it time for Britain’s high street chains to throw in the towel?

Numerous high street retailers have fallen in recent years. Credit: David Hawgood via Wikimedia Commons

It has become adapt or perish for the UK’s once bustling retail sector. Data published last year by the Local Data Company showed that up to 85,000 retail jobs were lost in the first nine months of 2018.

The decay of the high street has left retailers under pressure to introduce alternative methods to encourage consumers to buy in stores around the UK.

Store manager at Moss Bros Oxford Street West, Simon Danby believes a number of factors have contributed to the gradual demise of the high street. “People aren’t going shopping as much and footfall has decreased over the last year meaning we as a business haven’t been performing too well for a while now,’ Simon says.

Simon is now using social media as a way to boost business, creating an Instagram account in the hopes that it will encourage customers to make it to the store. “We need to get with the times, a lot of the businesses on Oxford Street aren’t doing as well as they once were because they aren’t embracing social media,” Simon says.

And he isn’t wrong. Just opposite Moss Bros is the world-famous department store John Lewis which announced last year that their profits would slump 99%. And just further down is House of Fraser who were forced to axe 6000 jobs in one of their worst years of the past decade.

And it isn’t just high street stores in London that are experiencing a decline in customers. Iqrah Ahmed works at Vision Express in Metrocentre in Newcastle upon Tyne and says she “encounters a number of customers who prefer to buy glasses online as they can get them for cheaper”. Iqrah says that the store is unable to match the online prices as for big brands, “there isn’t usually any room for bargaining”.

And the continued growth of online shopping could spell the end for retail stores. Over the past decade, UK giants such as BHS, Blockbusters and Woolworths have already perished.

And with online shopping continuing to grow at a substantial rate, it could be do-or-die for British high street stores.