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Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

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    #51
    Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

    Ah. RIght. And then they count each train copy as three or four, based on the much hoped-for 'pass-along readership'.

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      #52
      Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

      WH Smith, Ealing Broadway station
      You an Ealing Villager then Kid Forestry? I lived on Gordon road for a couple of years until September.
      What always amused me was that the WH Smiths there charged £1.50 for a bottle of diet coke, while the sandwich place right next door charged 95p. How they stay in business, I don't know.

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        #53
        Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

        Yeah, drinks are the worst. You can get a bottle of Orangina pretty much anywhere else in London for 70p. In Smith's they cost more than twice that.

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          #54
          Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

          Max Payne wrote:
          Iceland? You reckon? Traditionally that sort of business does all right with people switching down from more expensive stores.
          Their problem is who owns them, and if they don't find a way of curbing the fear that seems to be running through their senior management they'll start to lose them and struggle to replace them. More likely to be taken over than close.

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            #55
            Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

            My friend - a Guardian journo - has a son who loves Woolies. When he heard they would probably be closing, he went to his piggy bank and brought it to his mum and asked her to give it to them to help out.

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              #56
              Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

              It sounds like one of those "kids say the darndest things" moments at first, but he could actually have bought Woolworths with that cash.

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                #57
                Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                WH Smiths have always struck me as only stocking food and drink as a grudging afterthought.

                When they took over the John Menzies newsagent chain in the 1990s, the flagship store in Glasgow's Argyll Street suffered a huge drop in revenue because WHS initially refused to sell sandwiches, crisps and soft drinks as Menzies had done.

                They soon learned that refusing to sell fatty food to Glaswegians was poor business sense, but there are still plenty of their stores I've encountered where you can't buy so much as a can of Sprite, let alone a sarnie.

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                  #58
                  Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                  So, the big Zavvi stores in London (Piccadilly, Tottenham Court Road) have finally closed. Anyone know if they've been relet yet, and if so, to whom? Can't be easy trying to find a large retailer looking to expand into (relatively) expensive real estate at the moment.

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                    #59
                    Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                    It'll probably be another fucking primark.

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                      #60
                      Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                      H&M are taking over Woolworth's old shop here in Leamington.

                      Cheap clobber all round I guess.

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                        #61
                        Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                        the John Menzies newsagent chain in the 1990s...
                        Pointless, this, but it always sounded neat when I'd get UK pocket books or magazines here as a kid, and on the back leaf it would say "Can't find the following titles at your local newsagent? Be sure to ask them to stock them". A 'newsagent' sounded like such a serious business. He was a no-nonsense fellow, your newsagent, dedicated to stocking (promptly) the titles you were having difficulty finding.

                        I really did enjoy the ring of it.

                        As you were.

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                          #62
                          Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                          For years Argyle Street was the big shopping street in Glasgow, and both HMV and Virgin (as they were) had shops there.

                          Then a few years ago the main focus moved to Buchanan Street with the opening of the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre. Virgin bought a store opposite the Buchanan Galleries front door and coined it in, but HMV stayed put in Argyle Street and lost money.

                          Fast forward to 2009 - Zavvi go bust, not due to falling sales but due to a supplier going to the wall, and HMV move into the successful Buchanan Street store for pennies.

                          Moral of the story: it's better to be lucky than good.

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                            #63
                            Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                            What's the big pedestrian mall in Glasgow? I think it was a street and they bollarded it off for walking only,

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                              #64
                              Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                              That would be Argyle Street.

                              The photo I've linked to looks as if it's from the early 90s - the shop to the left of Olympus is the John Menzies I referred to on the previous page.

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                                #65
                                Next UK high street retailer to go tits up pool

                                That's the place. And there's a place down near the river called the Toll House or Tax House or Quay House or something, where I saw Billy Bragg, Natalie Merchant and Michael Stipe. This was in '90.

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