It has been announced today that both Woolies and MFI have gone bust - Woolies owes over £360,000,000 to banks. Combined, over 30,000 jobs are now at serious risk and this is a major blow to the high street.

 

Some have suggested that the Government should bail them out - although I agree that they shouldn't as this is down to competition and market forces as well as the credit crunch/recession.

 

Who do you think will be next, and where will it end?

 

 

oh dear, this time next year the high streets will be empty...I know so many small towns that will just die without Woolies, it's all they have in many cases

Woolies on the whole attracts chavs, single mums and grannies none of which tend to have much in the way of disposable income so I am not surprised to see it go bust, it will be no sad loss, it really is a downmarket type store compared with John Lewis, Marks and Spencer etc but of course it is a shame for those thousands that are going to lose their jobs just before xmas

 

MFI no one is moving house atm so I am not surprised about that either

 

There should be no government money to bail out either store, retail is dog eat dog

 

 

thought they were in talks to rescue them.... it wasnt on the news that they are bust...

The thing is with both of these companies, they have been in trouble for a long time, they were part of a group. Also High Street Stores are usually quiet, so more companies are bound to go down under, I think it also boils down to big shopping complexes like Bluewater and Lakeside. People just like to shop under one roof.

 

Around Medway Towns we have at least 3 or 4 Woolies stores, unemployment will go up for sure, and its really tough round here to get a job, the people that have been unemployed the longest are going to find it much harder to find full time work, my neighbour has been out of work for the past year, with stores like Woolies closing, he is going to find it even harder.

 

 

 

thought they were in talks to rescue them.... it wasnt on the news that they are bust...

It was all over the Channel 4 news at 7!

oh bugger. Wollies is the biggest store on Cupar high street.

 

And has the biggest space in the Wellgate Shopping Centre in Dundee. It's bigger than all of the high street stores as well (cept markies and Tesco met.)

GOOD RIDDANCE

OK, Woolies isn't the greatest store... but it's the biggest store on many, many suburban high streets - plus, 30,000 people losing their jobs is devastating news, especially now just before Christmas.

 

I have fond memories of Woolworths as a kid.... buying 7" vinyl singles there every week with my pocket money, buying toys there... my first Walkman, my first video games...... all my board games as a kid... so to see it go.... it's a really, really sad day.

 

I still buy quite a few DVDs and CDs there.... but now, apart from the cities and the boring supermarkets - where can you buy either of these?

 

It'll leave a colossal gap in many high streets.

 

A sad day. :(

i remember going Single shopping on a saturday or sunday. and the old 2singles for £5 they used to run. i got Can't Get You Outta My Head that week :heart:

 

 

They only ever stocked one cd in my Wollies tho, so after i'd ran down the street at lunch to buy what ever Sugababes CD they's decided to stock i'd have to go to Dundee or Kirkcaldy for the other one :lol:

It was all over the Channel 4 news at 7!

 

i was watching emmerdale! :P

 

yeah they are down and i agree with martin that large shopping centres are attracting shoppers away from the traditional high street shops. woolies has been dumbed down for sometime. westfield in derby "has nothing for us" says one of my oap customers, who is a traditional shopper.

RIP Pick N' Nick.

 

They've been badly managed for the best part of two decades going ever more downmarket and losing out on selling quality goods, and they failed to change their direction that WHSmiths did a decade ago when they were in decline. Plus the shopping experience in there has not been great compared to other stores.

 

I'd still expect they'll be bought up and streamlined for the future.

RIP Pick N' Nick.

 

They've been badly managed for the best part of two decades going ever more downmarket and losing out on selling quality goods, and they failed to change their direction that WHSmiths did a decade ago when they were in decline. Plus the shopping experience in there has not been great compared to other stores.

 

I'd still expect they'll be bought up and streamlined for the future.

 

i agree.... like a languishing football club that was once a 'big name', itll be bought up, re-packaged and re launched bearing little resemblance to its former self.

 

Another high street fallout. Batemans opticians are now part of vision express and it appears (all?) branches are being closed.

Ferraris, a Welsh chain of family bakers, similar to Greggs, went bust today too after over 50 years of trading.....

The problem with shops as large as Woolies going bust, is the knock on effect. They have thousands of suppliers, who not only wont get paid, but they are losing a big customer which will possibly make them go bust next year. Plus the administrators will slash the prices in woolies to get rid of the stock, which will take business away from other shops, so they will get into trouble as well.

The 31,000 job loses is pretty harsh especially this close to winter. January i think will be the worst month as people normally spend less then anyway as they cut back after xmas.

To be honest, the only time I've ever been into Woolies these days was for the occasional drum of cheap recordable DVDs to stick the TV I download onto...LOL. F1 Mad is indeed correct, there is a huge one in my hometown of Dundee, actually two when you consider the one in Lochee as well (unless that one closed down already, I dunno, I've no reason to go into Lochee for anything, my mum lives centrally on the Victoria Road...), so it will be a bit of a blow to the local economy, quite a few people will lose jobs. There's ones in Camden and Archway as well near where I live in London, Woolies is somewhat of a national institution tbh, for those of us of a certain generation, it really was where we started to buy 7" and 12" singles back in the day, this is before the likes of HMV or Virgin megastores came along, esp in Dundee and other smallish places...

 

So yeah, sad to see it go, if only for nostalgia reasons, and of course the facts that tens of thousands of jobs will be lost, which is going to be devastating to a lot of people and families who will be affected.... To say things like "good riddance" or whatever I think is a bit insensitive, this is people's livelihoods we're talking about here, no matter how "chavvy" the stores may have become, people still needed these jobs, especially at Christmas....

 

 

There's a store in Lochee? hmm, i may have to investigate that. I live up that way yet have never been into Lochee itself.

 

I was in Wollies Wellgate earlier (bout an hr ago) and it's hard to see why it's failing, apart from the entertainment section the store was well stocked and reasonably busy. Half the Chart was missing for CD's but the rest of it wasn't even that bad, well the range of Games was lacking in comparison to Virgin/HMV, but the one in Cupar is always busy and is always well stocked.

 

Must just be a English thing the poorly stocked stores

There's a store in Lochee? hmm, i may have to investigate that. I live up that way yet have never been into Lochee itself.

 

Well, like I say, they may have closed that one down, I aint been in the Lochee area for literally YEARS... It was in the high street just before that small road leading up to the "Stack Leisure Park" (another laughable concept and total white elephant in the long run, I mean, what the fukk is up there now apart from a Tesco and bloody Bingo Hall....? :lol: ).