Vaping bars replace travel agents as high street sees drastic revamp
OUR online shopping habits – and the rise of e-smoking – are changing the face of the high street, a new study out yesterday revealed.
In the past year, huge numbers of mobile phone shops, pawnbrokers and cheque-cashing businesses, clothes stores, travel agents and recruitment agencies have closed.
In their place vaping bars, parcel packaging and collection hubs, discounters, bookies, charity shops and take-aways have sprung up, the report shows. Although the number of closures was broadly in line with 2013 – 5,839 in total – the number of shops opening was much lower, resulting in a net closure of 987 shops.
The demise of Blockbuster meant that fully 100 per cent of video libraries at a national chain level disappeared from the high street.
The figures, compiled by Local Data Company for PwC, show that nearly three times as many shops disappeared from our streets in 2014 compared with the year before, in what the financial services group describes as a “drastic overhaul” of the high street “in response to the advance of online sales and changing consumer demand”.
The top line figures paint a depressing picture for the general state of the retail sector, which is hoping for good news from the Treasury over business rates.