Major beauty retailer to close ANOTHER city centre branch after being rescued from administration
A POPULAR British high street chain has been forced to close another shop despite it being saved from administration just months ago.
The Body Shop store in Norwich will close after 44 years of business.
The shop in Castle Street will close its doors for the last time on January 15.
A sign in the window says: “Closing down last day the 15th of Jan.”
And a second note tacked to the window said: “Sadly our family run store will be closing its doors on 15th January 2025.
“We want to thank everyone for being our customers for the last 44 years. Please respect our staff with questioning.”
Shoppers have taken to social media to share their disappointment at the store being closed.
One Facebook user said they were “gutted to see it go”.
And another added: “Such a shame. Love that shop.”
A third said: “Used their face creams for years. Guess it’s online only from now on.”
The cosmetics and skincare business was founded in 1976 by Dame Anita Roddick and has 113 stores across the UK.
The chain was saved from administration earlier this year after mass store closures.
The firm went under in February and in the following months closed 82 shops in the UK and cut up to 800 jobs.
At the time, the business employed around 1,500 people.
In September, the company was bought by growth capital firm Aurea Group.
Aurea told The Sun it had no immediate plans to shut any of The Body Shop’s remaining stores.
But since then it has confirmed it will shut a shop in Sheffield city centre after 34 years of trading.
The last day of trading at the shop in Orchard Square will be January 15, 2025.
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.
Other store closures
The Body Shop is not the only retailer that will close stores this month.
H&M-owned fashion chain Monki will shut two of its stores in the coming weeks.
Those set for closure are located at the Intu shopping centre in Newcastle Upon Tyne and in Manchester’s Arndale Centre.
The Newcastle branch will shut up shop today while the Manchester branch will close on January 17.
H&M plans to close seven Monki stores as it merges the brand with trendy fashion chain Weekday.
Meanwhile, stationer WHSmith will close one of its stores in Bournemouth, Dorset this month.
The shop on Old Christchurch Road will pull down its shutters for the last time on January 18.
The book and stationary chain has closed ten stores since March 2023, including shops in Manchester and Somerset.
Coffee giant Starbucks is also set to close two of its cafes this month.
The popular American chain will shut its coffee house on Dumfries high street on January 12.
Meanwhile, the Starbucks branch inside the Cineworld at Sixfields Leisure will shut for good on January 19.
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