DOWN AND OUT
Major DIY retailer to shut branch TOMORROW after huge closing down sale
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A MAJOR DIY retailer has confirmed a branch closure tomorrow after a huge sale.
The much-loved Homebase branch in Cambridge Retail Park will be closing its doors for good tomorrow, September 13.
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Founded in 1979, with the first store being in Croydon, the major retailer now has 142 stores in the UK.
Posters and banners appeared a few months ago in the Cambridge store advertising the closing down sale, they said: "All stock reduced" and "everything must go".
Shoppers took to social media at the time of the news to share their disappointment.
"That shop has been there for donkeys... Such a shame", said one shopper on Facebook.
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Another said: "This side of town is going to be a bit barren for shopping."
"Where is everyone supposed to do their shopping once both of these sites have been redeveloped," said a third.
It comes after Homebase confirmed it would close two of its other UK branches.
On September 6, the store in Northampton welcomed in customers for the final time.
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It is understood the closure came as a result of the landlord's plan to transform the site into two separate units.
In April, the Brentford Homebase also pulled its shutters down due to the site being redeveloped into housing.
Homebase is set to close ten of its stores, which will soon be taken over by a major supermarket chain
The Homebase in Ledbury could also follow suit in 2025.
This is due to the lease coming to an end and a new one not being agreed with the landlord.
Homebase is set to close 10 of its stores, which will soon be taken over by Sainsbury's.
Homebase was founded by Sainsbury's and Belgian retailer GB-Inno-BM to be a supermarket-styled British Do It Yourself market.
It is a store many Brits visit to improve, make and fix their homes and gardens.
They also sell brands such as Bathstore, Dulux, Farrow and Ball, Karcher, Powerbase and exclusive ranges from Country Living and House Beautiful.
Homebase was taken over by Hilco Capital in 2018, and has since closed around 100 stores.
Hilco bought the hardware store chain for £1 from Australian firm Wesfarmers, which paid £340million for what has been dubbed one of the "most disastrous takeovers ever seen".
Wesfarmers is known for its Bunnings chain in Australia. It attempted to transform Homebase into its own DIY brand.
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Prior to the takeover, Homebase had 250 stores at its peak with around 12,000 staff.
But Homebase soon returned to profit after it entered a CVA agreement and restructured its business.
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. 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.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase 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.
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