Of course it was inevitable, because for too many people (in my humble opinion), saving a few quid and not having to go out has trumped personal service, caring about our town centres, and touching and trying goods before buying them. I admit to being contemptuous of those who use retail stores to check out items before buying them online.
Today, while buying a low value item in store, the assistant tried 3 times to up sell to me. I started off saying I only wanted the one thing, then restated it, then said no, and no again, then I walked away. Found a sensible member f staff and complained, politely.
It was only a coffee.
So personal service, no thanks.
Losing GO will be a drop in the ocean for JD Sports.
I feel for the people who work in GO. Probably furloughed then to come back to this news. As if times weren't crappy enough
They will just shift the stock, and possibly branding, to other stores in the group, if they don't pre-pack.
The reality is that for the vast majority of bricks and mortar retailers the writing has been on the wall for over 30 years since the internet started to grow to the point where these days it's become a necessity of everyday life.
Sadly they've chosen to stick their heads in the sand and continued to believe that they could compete with the online only retailers and keep their bricks and mortar premises as well.
I've said before that apart from a very select few the days of "shops" as we know/knew them are numbered - the state of your local high street is all the evidence you need to see.
What is totally surprising is that most of the manufacturers don't appear to have looked at the bigger picture and moved to direct retailing to the customer cutting the retailers out of the market altogether. To make it successful they just need to offer free returns/exchanges on everything and a much larger slice of the pie would be theirs for the taking. There's clearly enough margin in it to make it a feasible proposition and it could ultimately reduce retail prices for the consumer.
Most large retailers have been banging on about the high cost of running retail units for decades, the smart ones have already closed down. Trouble is, our business legal system makes it easier to go into liquidation/receivership/administration, than get out of a landlords lease.
One thing that the 'High Street' has not got to grips with is the changing demographics, they still think that women are free to shop between 9AM and 5:30PM. I think more than half the workforce is now female.
The worse offenders are the small independents, they still want half day closing.
Penzance would be dead without the chains, they are keeping the town alive, just.