A HUGE stationery chain is to close a popular shopping centre store before the busy Christmas period.
Ryman stationer has more than 200 stores across the country, including in cities such as Brighton, Glasgow and London.
It sells everything from office supplies to kids’ stationary essentials.
But shoppers in Stoke-on-Trent will soon need to find an alternative retailer as Ryman is set to shut its store in the Longton Exchange shopping centre for good.
It will open for the final time on November 30, according to local news reports.
Shoppers have flocked to social media to share their sadness over the decision to close the site.
One Facebook user said: “So sad and some more people out of work.”
Another added: “Unfortunately, this city is falling like a house of cards.”
A third cried: “Sad another store is gone. It’s sad to see so many empty shops.”
The Sun has approached Ryman for comment and to confirm why it has taken the decision to close the branch.
Ryman isn’t the only retailer to have closed a store in Stoke in recent months.
Costa closed its branch in Alexandra retail park, Tunstall, Stoke on September 1.
USC is set to pull down the shutters on its shop at The Potteries Shopping Centre in Hanley in April.
Shoezone also closed its store in the city in the same month.
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.
What else is happening on the high street?
Shoppers have faced a swathe of closures on their local high streets in recent years as many of their favourite chains shutter sites.
The cost-of-living crisis has meant households have less money in their pockets and so are cutting back on their spending.
As a result, high street shops have seen lower footfall and less money landing in the tills.
That, along with ongoing restructuring plans and high rents, have forced many chains to close locations.
Figures from the Centre for Retail Research revealed almost 10,500 UK shops closed for the final time in 2023.
The 12-month period also saw over 119,000 jobs lost across the sector.
According to the centre’s data, 1,846 stores closed and 23,982 retail jobs were lost during the first six months of 2024.
November will be no different, with Co-op, Decathlon and Wetherspoon among those closing sites.
Of course, it’s not all bad news. In some cases branches will be replaced with bigger and better shops.
Retailers regularly open and close shops for a number of reasons – not just because they are struggling.
For example, they may have a store nearby that is performing better or it may be because they want to pick a spot that has higher footfall, such as in a retail park.
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