Poundstretcher to ‘close a quarter of its stores’

Poundstretcher is reportedly closing many of its stores across the UK.

The Grocer has reported that Poundstretcher is ‘looking at closing a quarter of its stores as an outcome of a review of its finances’. 

Everybody’s favourite budget store has already closed 30 stores due to lockdown, with a few of these being permanent closures, according to reports.

Aziz Tayub, the owner of Poundstretcher, published a full-year of accounts at the end of March, and at the time he warned the future of the company depended on cost-reduction. 

A Poundstretcher source told The Grocer: “They’ve been closing around two stores weekly since of the beginning of lockdown.”

“Some of them have only closed [temporarily] because a shopping centre closed and some of them won’t reopen because the lease has expired and they have let it go,” the source added. 

Stores which have recently closed, either temporarily or permanently, include St Austell on June 11th, Pembroke Dock on June 9th, Wigan on May 10th, Bletchley on April 11th, and Grimsby on April 9th, according to reports.

Since Autumn 2018 the company has been opening new stores under the ‘Bargain Buys’ banner, as well as converting a number of existing sites.

The plan was to attract a whole new customer base aligning Poundstretcher more closely with ‘big shed’ discounters such as Home Bargains and B&M. 

However, according to The Grocer, this delivered none of the company’s expectations. 

The list of store closures is getting longer and longer by the day, with the group behind Zara announcing today they will be closing 1,200 of its global stores. 

Victoria’s Secret, Monsoon, Accessorize, Laura Ashley, Aldo, Oasis, Warehouse are among the many others that have filed for administration during lockdown. Some have managed to keep online commerce still active, such as Debenhams.