A week after Woolworths closed its 200 stores, there is some good news as Iceland the frozen food retailer has announced that it has bought 51 of Woolworths stores. This move will create 2,500 jobs.
Woolworths closed 815 of its stores last week. The purchase of the 51 stores represents a small percentage of Woolworths’ remaining assets but the promise of new jobs being created is great news for the ailing economy. It is a symbolic move as well because surely the only retailers to prosper during a recession will be low cost retailers such as Iceland. Iceland and shops of their ilk represent how the new recession-era British high street will look.
The face of the high street is set to irrevocably change. The hardest hit high streets will be those in so-called clone towns. As the name suggests, clone towns are those with a proliferation of chain-stores and lack specialist shops such as butchers and fish mongers as well as independently run shops. They look like a hundred other high streets and lack any unique character.
A good example of a clone town is Wimbledon. Wimbledon is of course famous for tennis but it has the dubious honour of being named as Britain’s most cloned town centre in a 2005 report from the New Economics Foundation (NEF). Wimbledon’s Local Guardian reports that the recession could turn Wimbledon into a ghost town. The research group, Experian predicts that one in 10 high street stores across the country will lie empty by the end of the month. If a high street is predominantly made up of these chain shops, many premises could be vacated leading to a situation that the Wimbledon Local Guardian predicts.
