The UK high street seems to be taking a plunge with yet another retailer planning to close its doors to the North East. Clothing retailer, Superdry, has plans to shut its Metrocentre store on the 31st December 2023.
Image credit: Cadence Boxall
According to ONS, retail sales volumes are estimated to have fallen by 0.3% in October 2023, following a fall of 1.1% in September 2023. This has been detrimental to high street stores and shopping centres such as the Metrocentre in Gateshead.
What was once a bustling environment full of happy shoppers has recently turned into a sad state of affairs with shops closing left, right and centre.
Superdry is one of the many businesses set to shut down another of their stores in 2024. Dominic Batey, 23, gained his role within the company via the Princes Trust and has since been with the company for almost 5 years now, working at 4 different stores in this time and will soon be closing his third store he has worked at.
Dominic is one of the many staff members losing their job due to the slow fall of retail in the North East. Having worked full time as a sales assistant at the Metrocentre store for approximately a year and a half, Dominic has seen many small stores come and go while investments are being made for larger stores to take over these units.
“After sales skyrocketed online, I think a lot of companies have just went bust, and that’s evident from somewhere as small as The Bridges to somewhere as large as the Metrocentre”
Dominic Batey on the fall in retail sales
Dominic is “very disappointed” in the closure of yet another Superdry store and claims “I have been pushed to look elsewhere for jobs…they haven’t offered me anything specific [in the company]”.
Although this may come as a surprise to some, figures from Statista found that the Superdry sales revenue has dropped from £872million to £622.5million in the last 5 years. Statistics also show that the number of Superdry stores has been steadily falling since 2019, with only 213 stores remaining open by the 29th April 2023.
The decrease in high street retail figures is not specific to the Superdry stores as many shopping centres and high street stores across the UK continue to close down with the rise of online shoppers.
Lindsey Healy, 44, has been a loyal employee to Superdry for 11 and a half years however her career with the brand will soon come to an end with the closure of the store in the Metrocentre.
Despite her long standing loyalty to the company, Lindsey has not been offered any other positions within Superdry that allow her to stay in the North East and has also not been offered any position within the Metrocentre.
“Shopping centres are defiantly on the decline…It’s awful to see so many empty shops”
Lindsey Healy on the decline of retail
Although a lot of stores, small businesses in particular, are slowly becoming absent in these large shopping centres and high streets, there are still a lot of investments being made in an attempt to change this.
New stores such as ‘Harrods Beauty‘ which has a champagne bar inside and a refurbished ‘Flannels‘ store with an ‘Everlast’ gym above it show that Intu and the ‘Metrocentre’ team are making a continuous, conscious effort to try and improve foot flow in these areas and rebuild the shopping centre that is loved by many.
Really sad especially after losing our local one in The Bridges, Sunderland! Great read though!