Are Toys R Us and Maplins next to go under ?

Heartfeltdawn

NelsonP said:

Fretwired said:

 Perhaps the high street should be allowed to die.

This is an interesting question and I think the crux of the issue.

I'm joining the dots a bit, but I guess that most 'high streets' emerged from the historic market / trading areas or a particular town. Where people used to bring their locally produced wares to flog them.

The nice thing about that it was largely a self contained economy e.g. the baker made and traded his bread in his high street shop. In the afternoon he went to the local bike shop to get the wheel on his bike fixed. The bike shop owner, tired at the end of a hard day mending bikes, went to the pub and bought a beer. The next morning the landlord went to the baker to buy his loaf of bread and so it continued.

In the new model, the baker doesn't have a job as a baker because someone else makes the bread and the local Tesco convenience store sells it. Now he has upskilled and sits in front of a PC emailing people all day about stuff. He doesn't bother fixing his bike wheel, he just buys a new bike from the internet because they are cheap and so is the credit he uses to pay for it.

The money he borrows and spends doesn't just leave his community. It leaves the country and goes to Amazon and the bloke in China that made the bike wheel, who has no interest in having a beer at the bakers local boozer. So the baker stops going there and the boozer closes.

Meanwhile he keeps busting the wheels on his bike because the local council haven't repaired the pot holes in the road. Because the Amazon shareholders have the money that would have been paid to the council through taxes.

But at least he can get a new bike wheel cheaply and quickly while sitting on his arse.

I like the old model better. You?

In a nutshell. I've spent much of the last decade working in independent restaurants and had this type of discussion with people who start parping about large chains. The restaurants I've been in bought local meat, bread, vegetables, the works. It didn't come in the back of a large Bidvest van from a distribution centre. We bought bread from local bakers and the money paid by our customers stays in the area a lot longer than if you're buying a shitty meal in Nandos for instance. 

One wonders: there is often much said about migrants to this country sending money home. If the migration rate was reduced and 'natives' took those jobs, would that be a major boost to the home economy? 

Clashman

So you want to stop the free movement of money for certain people,I'm sure as much Foreign money comes
in as goes out in this Country.

NeilMcG

EricTheWeary said:

boogieman said:

chillidoggy said:

I'm not surprised about Maplin. Whilst I 've found the stores to be pretty good, their prices are astronomic compared with online purchasing. I always wondered how they managed to keep going.

Bit like WHSmiths. No idea how they managed to struggle on for so long. Must be their profits from massively overpriced books and chocolate bars at the railway stations. 

I usually mention WH Smiths in Discussions about ailing businesses. As far as I know they still have some wholesale business as well as near captive audiences in some places ( their mark ups in hospital branches are incredible) but I know some have gone off the high street and I expect to see more.

I usually wonder about Boots too, in their big branches the stock is spread around trying to fill in space. They just feel like a struggling business.

ToysRus terrible service whenever I went, I really didn't like it as a shopping experience. There are some other big names on the high street now like The Entertainer and Smyth's that seem to be doing a similar job but on a more manageable scale.  

WH Smiths and Boots are the last 2 big-name retailers left in the decayed & desolate centre of the small Co Durham town that I grew up in. It will be a sad day if they close/fold too.

not_the_dj

NeilMcG said:

WH Smiths and Boots are the last 2 big-name retailers left in the decayed & desolate centre of the small Co Durham town that I grew up in. It will be a sad day if they close/fold too.

Apart from supermarkets that's pretty much the same in my town.
Plenty of hairdressers, opticians and charity shops though.

scrumhalf

When my local Boots shut it was replaced by another chemist, called Cootes. I had hoped they would have the same staff working there, and all the product lines had one letter changed in their title but sadly, no.

crunchman

I read that Toys R Us is losing money on the big warehouse style shops they opened in pre-internet days.  They have lost a huge amount of business to the internet.  Shops like The Entertainer are generally smaller and a good experience for the kids.  If my wife takes ours shopping in Kingston, she will often pop into The Entertainer.  They get business like that.  You have to make a special trip to some out of town warehouse for Toys R Us, so you don't just pop in there.

The big problem for all shops though is business rates.  Paula in Chandlers told me what their business rates were when they were closing down.  I can't remember the exact figure, but I think it was thousands per week.  I remember being astonished how much they were.

A shop paying town/city centre business rates will always have a huge disadvantage compared with someone like Amazon in a big box on an industrial estate in a run down area.

If you add all the dodgy dealings with where profits are funneled, then it makes it even more uneven.  Amazon will channel all their "European" earnings through Luxembourg to avoid tax.  Brexit might stop them from doing that, and force them to set up a UK office and pay tax on UK generated profits here - in theory at least.  In practice, they will find a way to move the money around and dodge tax anyway.

Heartfeltdawn

Clashman said:

So you want to stop the free movement of money for certain people,I'm sure as much Foreign money comes
in as goes out in this Country.

Go back and read what I wrote slowly. Then point out where I write that I want to stop the free movement of money for certain people. 

Oh yes. I didn't.

What I did was pose a question. That curly bit of punctuation at the end of the paragraph is the clue. 

boogieman

crunchman said:

I read that Toys R Us is losing money on the big warehouse style shops they opened in pre-internet days.  They have lost a huge amount of business to the internet.  Shops like The Entertainer are generally smaller and a good experience for the kids.  If my wife takes ours shopping in Kingston, she will often pop into The Entertainer.  They get business like that.  You have to make a special trip to some out of town warehouse for Toys R Us, so you don't just pop in there.

The big problem for all shops though is business rates.  Paula in Chandlers told me what their business rates were when they were closing down.  I can't remember the exact figure, but I think it was thousands per week.  I remember being astonished how much they were.

A shop paying town/city centre business rates will always have a huge disadvantage compared with someone like Amazon in a big box on an industrial estate in a run down area.

If you add all the dodgy dealings with where profits are funneled, then it makes it even more uneven.  Amazon will channel all their "European" earnings through Luxembourg to avoid tax.  Brexit might stop them from doing that, and force them to set up a UK office and pay tax on UK generated profits here - in theory at least.  In practice, they will find a way to move the money around and dodge tax anyway.

If Amazon do have to pay proper tax rates then it’ll just get passed on to the customer. Can’t see their profits dropping that much. 

ICBM

boogieman said:

If Amazon do have to pay proper tax rates then it’ll just get passed on to the customer. Can’t see their profits dropping that much. 

That's exactly the point - their profits are small compared to their turnover. So in order for the profits not to disappear completely they would *have* to put prices up, which would be good for bricks-and-mortar shops. And in the end, everyone.

sixstringsupplies

I love Maplins - I go to my local Maplins pretty
much every Sunday for some bits and I’ll be sad to see them go. I do most of my buying online but it’s nice to be able to nip into Maplins which is just round the corner from me. 

It is one of the very few retailers that are *maybe* a little over friendly and say “hello, can I help you?  What are you looking for?” as
soon as you walk through the door (which does often seem like a bombardment and a bit over the top when you’re a regular and know what you’re looking for) but ill definitely miss it. Most shops don’t show the same enthusiasm. 

Their prices are astronomical for most items, but good on others. For me it’s all about the convenience. 

NelsonP

Clashman said:

So you want to stop the free movement of money for certain people,I'm sure as much Foreign money comes
in as goes out in this Country.

Nope

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/nationalaccounts/balanceofpayments/bulletins/uktrade/december2017#the-total-uk-trade-deficit-widened-by-38-billion-to-108-billion-in-the-three-months-to-december-2017