Marks & Spencer announces exact date it will close 100-year-old flagship store after ‘never recovering from Covid'
END OF AN ERA Marks & Spencer announces exact date it will close 100-year-old flagship store after 'never recovering from Covid'
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MARKS & Spencer has confirmed its historic flagship store will close in a matter of weeks, after failing to recover from Covid.
The popular supermarket has been serving Wolverhampton shoppers since 1929, however it will soon be closing its doors for good.
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M&S has announced the closing date of one of its flagship stores
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The store is located on Dudley Street, Wolverhampton and will stop trading on September 27.
M&S regional manager, Calum Telford, said: "I would like to say a massive thanks to all our customers who have shopped with us over the years and our colleagues, past and present, who have contributed to the store.
"We have a proud history in Wolverhampton and are working with the city council to find a suitable alternative food location.
"This is part of our wider investment into the Black Country, including modernising our Merry Hill store, and we will keep the local community updated."
Mr Telford added: "In the meantime, conversations are continuing with our store colleagues and we will offer them alternative roles at M&S wherever possible."
Staff at the Dudley store have also been informed that it has been confirmed by bosses that the business hopes to find a suitable alternative city location to open a new dedicated food store.
M&S first announced the store's closure last month after sharing that it had been performing "less well for a long period of time."
According to bosses, this is a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, from which the shop "never fully recovered."
In a statement made at the time, Mr Telford said: ""Our UK-wide store rotation programme is all about reshaping for growth and making sure every M&S store delivers the best possible shopping experience for our customers.
"That's why we have made the tough decision to propose the closure of our Dudley Street store.
M&S launches first-of-its-kind store
"Sadly, the store has been performing less well for a long period of time and has never fully recovered from the Covid pandemic."
This comes after M&S announced in 2022 than it intended to reduce its number of traditional department store openings from 247 to 180, while also opening an additional 100 new food halls by April 2026.
Also, earlier this summer company chairman Archie Norman said the firm was looking to exit "struggling town centres" as part of a £500 million plan to update its retail store portfolio nationwide.
Meanwhile, Wolverhampton Council has stressed that it has been working alongside M&S to try and find a new location for a food hall in the city.
A council spokesperson said: 'It will be sad to see M&S leave the Dudley Street store at the end of September - but they remain committed to Wolverhampton and we are working with them to identify suitable locations that fit their new business model.
'We appreciate how unsettling this is for staff, and the council's Wolves at Work employment support team is connected with M&S to support workers and their families.
"We are also keen to see the privately-owned Dudley Street site brought back into use quickly.
'As everyone knows town and city centres across the country are changing and we fully understand M&S's difficult decision was driven by wider, changing market conditions and customer behaviour."
In brighter news, M&S is set to launch its revamped food hall at Merry Hill shopping centre this Friday.
Wolverhampton Council have said despite the sad news about the department store closure, there are lots of regeneration projects set to create new homes and jobs to look forward to.
A spokesperson added: ""The transformation of the city centre includes thousands of new city centre homes at Smithgate and Canalside; better connectivity and safer public spaces; a world-class entertainment venue at the University of Wolverhampton at The Halls; a new independent cinema at the Chubb Building; a growing commercial district at the Interchange and a new £61million City Learning Quarter which opens this autumn and will bring thousands of new visitors to our city centre every week.'
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.
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