John Lewis is known to be contemplating a contemporary spherical of retailer closures, underscoring the toll that the pandemic is taking over Britain’s abandoned excessive streets.
The 156-year-old retailer is known to be reconsidering the dimensions of its nationwide community of branches, lower than eight months after it introduced the closure of eight shops to deal with the impression of coronavirus.
As much as eight extra of its 42 remaining shops may now be closed down, the Sunday Instances reported, because the John Lewis Partnership, which additionally owns Waitrose, considers chopping house and prices by transferring into smaller websites.
John Lewis declined to remark, however any closures could be a brand new blow to Britain’s beleaguered excessive streets, after the latest demise of Debenhams and Philip Inexperienced’s Arcadia chain, which have been purchased by on-line specialists Boohoo and Asos and can disappear from procuring streets.
The consent of the corporate’s landlords shall be key in any plan by John Lewis to close retailers. However the downsizing plans may very well be revealed alongside the corporate’s annual outcomes, due on 11 March, when the extent of the injury wreaked by the pandemic will develop into clearer.
Whereas on-line retailers comparable to Amazon and Ocado have thrived amid successive lockdowns, proudly owning a nationwide community of branches has hit retailers like John Lewis exhausting.
The impression of Covid-19 got here on the worst doable time for the corporate, which was already going through mounting issues from on-line rivals. It had reported its first ever half-year loss in September 2019.
In September final yr, after the primary lockdown, the corporate stated gross sales had been holding up nicely, as on-line gross sales had surged.
However the impression of that success has hit the shops exhausting. Earlier than the pandemic the shop group calculated that £6 out of each £10 in gross sales was linked to searching in shops. However final autumn the group stated that Covid had minimize the gross sales linked to shops to simply £3 out of £10.
Because of this the group slashed the notional worth of its bricks-and-mortar retailers by £470m – which pushed the corporate to an enormous £635m half-year loss.
The stoop into the pink meant that John Lewis stated it could cancel the annual bonus it awards to workers this yr for the primary time since 1953.
With the corporate at a crossroads, Dame Sharon White, the chairman, wielded the axe over eight shops.
The store closures got here at a price of 1,300 jobs, with retailers in Croydon, Watford, Newbury, Swindon and Tamworth shutting their doorways, in addition to small hubs at Heathrow airport and London St Pancras station.
A brand new retailer in Birmingham, the place the division retailer’s former managing director Andy Avenue is mayor of the West Midlands, was additionally shut down.
White is hoping to revive the group’s fortunes with a transfer into property, changing almost half of the corporate’s flagship division retailer on London’s Oxford Avenue into workplace house. There are additionally plans to construct properties for hire alongside a few of its supermarkets.
In response to a report launched final month, England’s excessive streets may lose as much as 400,000 retail jobs on account of extra individuals working from residence and procuring on-line after the coronavirus pandemic, with prosperous cities within the south among the many most weak.
The UK Treasury is exploring choices for a web-based gross sales tax in response to an explosion in web procuring, as Covid-19 accelerates the closure of excessive road retailers throughout the nation.
