More than 30,000 UK retailers in 'significant' financial distress

[Saving For a Space Ship]

More than 30,000 UK retailers in 'significant' financial distress

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/23/high-street-online-uk-retailers-significant-financial-distress-christmas-shopping

Quote

..Data collected by the insolvency firm Begbies Traynor is the latest to lay bare the retail industry’s woes, which have extended beyond the high street. Nearly 8,500 of the 30,000 experiencing a holiday shopping slump are online retailers, marking a 2% rise from a year earlier and a 49.5% increase since the start of 2017...

 

Edited December 24, 2018 by Saving For a Space Ship

[macca13]

11 hours ago, Saving For a Space Ship said:

More than 30,000 UK retailers in 'significant' financial distress

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/23/high-street-online-uk-retailers-significant-financial-distress-christmas-shopping

 

All my money goes to the landlord.. What do we expect.. What money do people have left to spend except for credit cards, once their rent and bills have been paid.. 

This cost of living crisis is across the western world and property prices are the biggest problem! 

Half property/rent prices and only then will the problem be anywhere near fixed.. 

Then stop immigration, we are sliding further towards a third world country..

[Si1]

Question for anyone - do govt ministers tend to hold (a) retail shares or (b) property portfolios.

Answers on the back of a ten pound note please...

[chronyx]

12 minutes ago, macca13 said:

All my money goes to the landlord.. What do we expect.. What money do people have left to spend except for credit cards, once their rent and bills have been paid.. 

This cost of living crisis is across the western world and property prices are the biggest problem! 

Half property/rent prices and only then will the problem be anywhere near fixed.. 

Then stop immigration, we are sliding further towards a third world country..

Just whack it on the plastic! 

[localhero1983]

Retail is going the same way as the pub game, you can scrape a living in some cases, but it's hard work and chances are you are going to fail in the next few years

[PeanutButter]

Went into a Gap - looked abandoned. Piles of jumpers, worn out changing rooms, teenagers running the place, permanent discounts.

 

[ftb_fml]

Quelle surprise.

Just another of the increasingly dire warnings that we're reaching the end of the unsustainable debt-fuelled consumption binge pushed by the establishment for decades to keep us passified, our ruined economy propped up and their troughs overflowing.

The figures quoted are totally in keeping with my own experience - after years of decline my own job in non-essential retail went when the shop closed earlier in the year; the hundreds of square metres of shop space in local retail parks are for the most part utterly deserted and with a few exceptions everyone I know of a similar age to myself is reining in the spending hard.

It looked like it was all going to hit the fan this time last year (and many big names did succumb throughout the year) however come January / February it's going to be an absolute bloodbath IMO. Just another cloud in the perfect storm that seems now to be gathering at a much accelerated pace - I think 2019 will be the year we well and truly go over the edge of the abyss.
 

Edited December 24, 2018 by ftb_fml

[honkydonkey]

Amazon getting tax breaks is much akin to the BTL crowd getting the same advantage. 

Result: decimation. 

[PeanutButter]

11 minutes ago, honkydonkey said:

Amazon getting tax breaks is much akin to the BTL crowd getting the same advantage. 

Result: decimation. 

Good parallel. 

[Harry Sacks]

Fill the gap between incomes and prices with debt. How long can that game continue?

[Saving For a Space Ship]

Quote

John Lewis and M&S begin Boxing Day sales on websites

“A lot of retailers will launch their Boxing Day sales on Christmas Day or even Christmas Eve  …

“It was called Super Saturday but it was not particularly super,” said Diane Wehrle, Springboard’s marketing and insights director. “Footfall on Friday and Saturday was lower than last year, by 6.5% and 0.7% respectively.”

The scale of discounts now on offer appeared to draw shoppers to the high street on Christmas Eve with Springboard reporting footfall up nearly 7% on last year by lunchtime. For shopping centres the figure was nearly 10%.

“Shoppers appear to have changed their pattern of shopping, leaving it almost to the very last opportunity to visit retail destinations,” said Wehrle. “Part of this is likely to be the opportunity to take advantage of additional discounts introduced by retailers today in order to clear as much stock as possible.”

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/24/desperate-retailers-hoping-for-christmas-eve-shopping-reprieve

Desperation

Edited December 24, 2018 by Saving For a Space Ship

[Fromage Frais]

19 hours ago, localhero1983 said:

Retail is going the same way as the pub game, you can scrape a living in some cases, but it's hard work and chances are you are going to fail in the next few years

Agreed

The big Witherspoon's and destination pubs survive but the local nip in for a pint looks mostly doomed.

The government obviously feels.like.its better to be at home drinking than down a pub.  In some countries cafes have price controls to protect the social interaction.  Very sad really so many dead villiages where you have 500k homes but no pub, no shop, no post office and no kids on the swings and a school on the edge of viability.  

Does anyone nip out to get anything anymore as it's much easier and cheaper to have it Amazon primed batteries/bulbs etc etc

[otters]

What do retailers expect?

They encouraged everybody to binge spend a few weeks back with this Black Friday nonsense. Now they want them to do it again, and then again in the January sales.  

[spyguy]

34 minutes ago, Fromage Frais said:

Agreed

The big Witherspoon's and destination pubs survive but the local nip in for a pint looks mostly doomed.

The government obviously feels.like.its better to be at home drinking than down a pub.  In some countries cafes have price controls to protect the social interaction.  Very sad really so many dead villiages where you have 500k homes but no pub, no shop, no post office and no kids on the swings and a school on the edge of viability.  

Does anyone nip out to get anything anymore as it's much easier and cheaper to have it Amazon primed batteries/bulbs etc etc

And noone to left to lift their rotting corpse off the floor.

Nothing ruins a village than having it full of asset rich Nimbies. Who are then surprised noone ants to buy their house - no school or pub or shop, or is willing to drive 10m to look after them at NMW.

[spyguy]

14 minutes ago, otters said:

What do retailers expect?

They encouraged everybody to binge spend a few weeks back with this Black Friday nonsense. Now they want them to do it again, and then again in the January sales.  

This.

Any everyone knows the boxing day sales.

Must people are fed up with retail mas. Once kuds are 11+ just have a meal.

[Arpeggio]

34 minutes ago, Fromage Frais said:

Very sad really so many dead villiages where you have 500k homes but no pub, no shop, no post office and no kids and a school on the edge of viability.

I took the bit about “on the swings” out for more accuracy. Where I am the local children’s nativity play uses adults for some roles due to lack of children. Also a local school shut down. Local pub usually struggling often empty, frequent change of owners. Average house price something like 700k, pot holes a plenty and a request in the local rag for someone under 40 and can’t afford a house to somehow work for free as an emergency first responder.

[Si1]

2 hours ago, Arpeggio said:

. Average house price something like 700k, pot holes a plenty and a request in the local rag for someone under 40 and can’t afford a house to somehow work for free as an emergency first responder.

During the national riots in 2011 or whenever, I recall elderly homeowners sitting on million pound pads moaning that the twenty something firemen on the scene didn't seem to risk their necks enough to save the houses they'd no hope of ever affording.

Edited December 25, 2018 by Si1

[Arpeggio]

1 hour ago, Si1 said:

During the national riots in 2011 or whenever, I recall elderly homeowners sitting on million pound pads moaning that the twenty something firemen on the scene didn't seem to risk their necks enough to save the houses they'd no hope of ever affording.

I also doubt they see the link between banks bailed out (and other ways tax payers are used for hpi) and cuts to public services.

[Si1]

1 hour ago, Arpeggio said:

I also doubt they see the link between banks bailed out (and other ways tax payers are used for hpi) and cuts to public services.

Indeed, the credit crunch was due to the under 20s eating avocadoes and not buying second hand furniture.

[No One]

On 24/12/2018 at 13:03, macca13 said:

All my money goes to the landlord.. What do we expect.. What money do people have left to spend except for credit cards, once their rent and bills have been paid.. 

This cost of living crisis is across the western world and property prices are the biggest problem! 

Half property/rent prices and only then will the problem be anywhere near fixed.. 

Then stop immigration, we are sliding further towards a third world country..

The same applies to retail. With retailers forking out profits to renters who produce nothing of vaue, this is what made online much more competitive, because online retailers only need a warehouse as opposed to a highstreet shop that depends on a warehouse + 1000s of stores. 

[PeanutButter]

Boxing day and the shops are quiet. Only people with bags in hands are Chinese/Asian/Middle eastern

Edited December 26, 2018 by PeanutButter

[Saving For a Space Ship]

The big question is why did Uk retail sales collapse massively in Noveber 2018 ? 

Similar article here 

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2018/12/begbies-traynor-warns-30000-retailers-significant-financial-distress/

Good discussion on ebay uk biz sellers forum 

https://community.ebay.co.uk/t5/Business-Seller-Board/How-are-your-Christmas-Sales-Doing/m-p/6175464#M198402

Quote

Sorry but I think this is the opposite of a "wild west", which was people rushing to grab a share of a brand new market and to tap into new resources in a bid to make their wealth. 

 

This is internet maturity where a few huge companies control the flow of money and the barriers to entry have become increasingly great. 

 

Amazon is swallowing up businesses online and offline..... the choice for small time people is to join them or die, and if you join them and thrive then they'll probably stock your items and swallow you too. 

 

Nothing at all exciting about the current retail environment or the looming major US recession, which will almost certainly push us into recession too.

 

Things are bad. 

---

 

They can only stock items which are readily available. I've avoided selling such goods online for many years, unless I can offer them at an unbeatable price, as this has been their obvious intention for a very long time.

---

 

Well that's the supply side of the equation.

 

You still need the demand side.... and US consumer debt is currently at record highs, having exceeded 2008 levels.

 

UK household debt is worse than at any time on record.

 

Now property prices in the south of England have begun to fall.... UK insolvencies are at a six year high, six years ago was 2012 so the tail end of the financial crisis.

 

Literally the only piece of good news that could be reported is that UK banks all apparently pass stress testing which means that a bank bailout would be less likely to be required this time..... although that changes the moment it transpires that one of the banks has been falsifying their numbers or has a secret black hole that nobody knows about, knocking the confidence of the sector and setting off a chain reaction again and a new credit crisis. 

 

2019 is going to be grim, nothing "wild west" about it, it will be more like 1930's great depression if anything. 

 

An article in The Guardian today claims that 30,000 UK retailers are in significant financial distress..... and 8,500 of those aren't actually even bricks and mortar but are online retailers.

 

One person speculating anecdotally that things are like the "wild west" again shouldn't give you cause for optimism in the face of the cold hard facts. 

 

This January will inevitably see a few large surprise casualties, that's when the big high street administrations are usually announced.... giving them just enough time to go on a final cash grab by selling soon to be worthless gift vouchers and trying to palm off a bit more 2014 stock in the January sales.

 

Things are bad. 

 

[PeanutButter]

Boxing Day sales draw fewer UK shoppers

Number of visitors to shopping centres, high streets and retail parks down 4.2% year on year

The number of shoppers visiting retailers on Boxing Day has fallen for the third year in a row as worries about the economy and the rise of internet shopping takes its toll on high streets.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/dec/26/boxing-day-sales-uk-shoppers-high-streets-retail

Tick tick tick...

 

Even the tourists who have travelled thousands of miles to shop in our depreciated currency tax free aren’t buying. Batten down the hatches. Storm’s coming.

[jimmy2x3]

the posh stores like m&s are busy, so are the discounters like homebargains. 

 

everyone else is stuffed, there are just rich and poor people now

[reddog]

Funnily enough, I was thinking of seeing if I could go through all of 2019 without buying any new clothes....what an evil anti society person I am!!