Huge shoe chain with 297 shops to close seaside store in hours as shoppers fear ‘will be left a ghost town'

The Sun

12-05-2025

A MAJOR shoe chain with nearly 300 shops is pulling the plug on its beloved seaside branch in just HOURS and shoppers are gutted.
Shoe Zone is set to close its Bexhill town centre store later today, leaving locals heartbroken as yet another high street name disappears.
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The discount footwear giant, which has 297 stores across the UK, confirmed the Devonshire Road branch will shut its doors for good at the end of the day.
It marks the latest blow to Britain's struggling high streets, with the retailer blaming rising costs and 'challenging trading conditions' for axing under performing sites.
The Bexhill community has taken to social media to share their disappointment.
A local fumed: "Bexhill is turning into a ghost town."
Another added: 'This is so sad, soon we'll have nothing left.'
While a third shopper wrote: 'Wow, I used to visit this store for the kids' shoes, sad to lose another high street name.'
Many shared their concerns over for Bexhill town centre, worried it could become a "ghost town" as the high street continues to suffer.
The branch had already been advertising its closure since November, and the property is already up for rent with commercial agents Dyer & Hobbis asking £29,500 a year.
Shoe Zone previously said that soaring business rates, wage hikes, and poor weather had made some stores no longer financially viable.
In 2023, the company saw a 40% drop in pre-tax profits, with chairman Charles Smith pointing to an 'unseasonably wet summer' as a major factor in lost sales.
The Bexhill closure follows a string of others across the UK, including shutdowns in Boscombe, Bournemouth and Burgess Hill, West Sussex.
Stores in Watford, Stoke-on-Trent and Inverness also shut last year.
Despite the downturn, Shoe Zone has continued to refit and relocate shops, opening new sites in towns like Maidstone and Bristol as part of its strategy to shift focus to larger, more profitable locations.
Other shops leaving the high street
Huttons in London is set to shut its store in the Putney Exchange due to excessive energy costs.
The gift shop became a local icon after it opened in the 1990s.
Meanwhile, high street fashion chain New Look has begun to close stores as it scales back its UK footprint.
It is understood to be shutting nearly 100 stores - equivalent to around a quarter of its 364 shops.
Stores in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, St Austell, Cornwall and Porth, Rhondda Cynon Taf have launched closing down sales.
Reports suggest that the company has been forced to accelerate the pace of store closures due to tax changes in the Autumn Budget.
And its not the only high street legend to close its doors.
Beales, one of Britain's oldest department stores, has launched a closing down sale before it shuts its last remaining shop after more than 140 years.
The company will shut its branch in Poole's Dolphin Centre on May 31.
The sale includes fashion, furniture, gifts and cosmetics, being sold for up to 70% off.
Beales chief executive Tony Brown blamed the "devastating impact" of the rise in national insurance contributions and the higher minimum wage for the store closure.
Why are retailers closing stores?
RETAILERS have been feeling the squeeze since the pandemic, while shoppers are cutting back on spending due to the soaring cost of living crisis.
High energy costs and a move to shopping online after the pandemic are also taking a toll, and many high street shops have struggled to keep going.
However, additional costs have added further pain to an already struggling sector.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs from April will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
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."
It comes after almost 170,000 retail workers lost their jobs in 2024.
End-of-year figures compiled by the Centre for Retail Research showed the number of job losses spiked amid the collapse of major chains such as Homebase and Ted Baker.
It said its latest analysis showed that a total of 169,395 retail jobs were lost in the 2024 calendar year to date.
This was up 49,990 – an increase of 41.9% – compared with 2023.
It is the highest annual reading since more than 200,000 jobs were lost in 2020 in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced retailers to shut their stores during lockdowns.
The centre said 38 major retailers went into administration in 2024, including household names such as Lloyds Pharmacy, Homebase, The Body Shop, Carpetright and Ted Baker.
Around a third of all retail job losses in 2024, 33% or 55,914 in total, resulted from administrations.
Experts have said small high street shops could face a particularly challenging 2025 because of Budget tax and wage changes.
Professor Bamfield has 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."