- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Admin Super
200 Boots health and beauty locations could be at risk of closure in the coming months, according to recent reports. Stores up and down the UK are on the line.
This news comes after the revelation that American owners WBA, found at WalgreensBootsAlliance.com, have seen company profits drop by a drastic 18.3 percent in the last year alone. In hard numbers, revenue has fallen by a total of £6.8 billion.
Towns and cities with more than one Boots outlet will be the first to see changes, consolidating into a single location, according to some analysts. While Boots has stated that it would prefer to move staff from affected stores into neighbouring or new shopfronts, there will doubtless be some job losses in the near future. Boots currently employs some 60,000 workers in the UK.
A spokeswoman for the company said, “We currently do not have a major programme envisaged, but we are always reviewing underperforming stores and seeking out opportunities.”
“As is natural with a business of our size, we have stores opening, closing and relocating on a regular basis. We have had around 2,500 stores open for several years now.”
Boots chief exec. Stefano Pessina said, “This has been a very disappointing quarter for us. While we are not the only company that has been impacted by the marked change in the environment, that’s not an excuse.
“We are going to be more aggressive in our response to these rapidly shifting trends.”
Boots began as a family herbal medicine shop over 150 years ago, on the Nottingham highstreet of the Victorian era. Today, it’s a UK household name and provider of countless prescriptions and beauty and health products. Its recent troubles are nothing new, however.
Source: Pexels
Stores and businesses throughout UK high streets have been struggling for a long time. The advent of online shopping combined with multiple economic crises has seen spending rise and fall to such extremes that many British staples have disappeared in recent years. The Brexit vote, which increased the cost of imported goods and damaged confidence in the pound, has also been blamed to have exacerbated the problem.
In 2018 alone, Maplin, Toys R Us and others went bust. Many more such as Homebase, New Look and Mothercare faced serious restructuring and buyouts.
Some businesses have adapted by moving either partially or completely online, with high street bookies and casinos being specific industries showing signs of this. In fact, mobile and online gaming are close to obscuring their predecessors completely, finding exponential growth where physical stores are finding losses. New online slots at MagicalVegas.com pop up daily; themes of gladiators, space and adventure. The variety and rate of new content simply can’t be challenged by a physical store.
According to an analysis of the Ordnance Survey data, “English and Welsh town centres have lost 8% of their shops on average since 2013”. Major cities such as Stoke and Blackpool have seen an even worse decline. Stoke alone has lost almost a quarter of its total shops in the last six years. The high street crisis only continues with Boots’ recent announcement.
Patrick O’Brien, retail research director of GlobalData.com said, “Boots’ dated approach has made its shelf edge prices uncompetitive with discounters such as Aldi, Lidl and Savers, who have all been eating into its market share in health and beauty”.
The Boots review is understood to be taking place over the next 12 to 18 months, from the top down. An announcement in February stated that some 350 jobs were at risk in the head office alone. Further information will likely be unavailable until the next quarters business results.
