AN iconic high street brand with more than 1,000 UK locations is set to shut a popular branch in a major blow to a town’s trade.
Argos will be closing its large store in Plymouth city centre this month, delivering another hit to the already struggling high street.
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The standalone store in the former Derrys building on Royal Parade will close on the evening of October 17.
But a new Argos “store-in-store” will open the next day inside the nearby Sainsbury’s superstore at the Armada Centre.
Sainsbury’s, which acquired Argos in a £1.4billion deal in 2016, has not yet commented on possible job losses, but reports suggest that up to 30 staff could face redundancy as part of the closure.
This is part of a broader trend, with Sainsbury’s gradually shutting standalone Argos outlets and relocating them inside its supermarkets.
Plymouth previously saw its New George Street Argos store close in 2016, with the Marsh Mills Sainsbury’s superstore hosting a replacement outlet.
With Argos sales falling, Sainsbury’s also discontinued Argos’ iconic printed catalogue in 2020 and has committed to closing 420 standalone stores by March 2024.
Since March 2023, 72 outlets have already shut, with 213 remaining.
Despite lower consumer demand for electronics and games, Sainsbury’s continues to expand its “store-in-store” Argos model, planning to close an additional 20 standalone stores this financial year while opening around 10 new in-supermarket branches.
Plymouth will retain another Argos store at Transit Way.
Argos, founded in 1972, became a high street staple with its catalogue-based model, and today operates around 1,230 outlets across the UK, including those inside Sainsbury’s.
While sales grew 1.7% to £4.23 billion in the year to March 2024, pre-tax profits dropped 15.3% to £277 million.
Argos has closed dozens of stores over the last two years.
The high street retailer has already closed 42 UK shops, including all 34 of its branches in the Republic of Ireland last June.
In July, Sainsbury’s issued a major update on plans to close more Argos stores.
Why are retailers closing shops?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open. In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it relocated a tired store in Chesterfield to a new big store in a retail park half a mile away, its sales in the area rose by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name a few.
What’s increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
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