High street card retailer with 160 branches to shut another store and launches closing down sale
Clintons is pulling down the shutters on its branch in the Middleton Grange Shopping Centre, Hartlepool, in a matter of weeks.
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An employee working for the retailer confirmed the branch will shut on August 16.
The branch has also reportedly launched a closing down sale with up to 30% off stock.
Shoppers and locals reacting to the closure on Facebook have branded Hartlepool a "ghost town".
The closure comes after Clintons shut a string of shops across the UK.
A branch shut in Keighley in June with stock reduced by up to 20%, while two others closed in Halifax and Andover in April.
Clintons, now owned by Pillarbox Designs, the parent company of Cardzone, warned of further closures in April due to rising employer National Insurance contributions and the national minimum wage.
The rate of employer NICs was hiked from 13.8% to 15% and the threshold at which they are paid lowered from £9,100 to £5,000 in April.
The national minimum wage was also increased by up to £12.21 a hour.
The warning came despite Clintons posting a return to profits in its latest results, with a pre-tax profit of £8million for the year ending June 29, 2024.
A statement from the retailer in April said: "The high street continues to be unpredictable and the company is seeing reduced footfall in the stores year on year.
Britain's retail apocalypse: why your favourite stores KEEP closing down
"The company continues to monitor the performance of the existing estate and to close the poor performing stores, which, whilst impacting on turnover, should improve profitability moving forwards."
Clintons currently operates over 160 stores in the UK but at one point boasted more than 1,000.
In 2023, it announced plans to close 38 of its then 225 stores to the loss of over 300 jobs.
Clintons was contacted for comment.
Trouble on the high street
It is no secret the high street has struggled in recent years, due to a combination of factors.
Shoppers are buying online considerably more than they were before, while retailers have faced higher rental, wage and energy costs.
Some big names have announced mass store closures in 2025, including Poundland, Hobbycraft and The Original Factory Shop.
The Centre for Retail Research says the sector has been going through a "permacrisis" since the 2008 financial crash.
Figures from the Centre also show 34 retail companies operating multiple stores stopped trading in 2024, leading to the closure of 7,537 shops.
Businesses have cautioned more closures are to be expected this year as well due to the hike to employer NICs and staff wages.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce showed that more than half of companies planned to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms also found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: "The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025."
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
"By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer's household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.
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