Shopping
‘Another one bites the dust’, cry shoppers as card retailer to close Scots store
SHOPPER have been left gutted after a major card retailer announced they were closing down a store.
The hugely popular firm announced they were shutting down the shop in just days.
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Card Factory has over 1,000 branches across the UK, including in major cities.
They are a common sight on high streets and shopping centres and are loved by punters for their choice of card for any occasion.
Bosses at the firm announced they were shutting down the Card Factory in Cumbernauld, North Lanarkshire.
The company’s Teviot Walk branch will close its doors for the final time this week.
Punters were told the shop was closing because of another Card Factory nearby.
There is another branch of the card and gift outlet in Cumbernauld’s Antonine Shopping Centre.
A sign on the shop alerted customers to the closure.
It read: “We’re closing on July 20. The party continues at your nearest store: Card Factory Unit 75, Antonine Shopping Centre, 17 Forth Walk Cumbernauld, G67 1BT.”
The retailer – which sells everything from cards, gifts and party essentials like balloons – said they decided to close the store due to having another one just “around the corner”.
But customers were still not happy with the shock news, with many of them blasting the state of the town’s shops.
One Facebook user said: “It would be better to just close the centre down completely.”
While another shopper wrote: “This place is an absolute shambles.”
A third user added: “Another one bites the dust.”
A Card Factory spokesperson said: “We continually review our estate of over 1,050 stores across the UK and Ireland.
“With our other Cumbernauld store just around the corner in the Antonine Shopping Centre on Forth Walk, (0.2 miles away), we have taken the decision to close our store on Teviot Street from July 20.
“We look forward to continuing to serve all our Cumbernauld customers and helping them celebrate their special life moments.”
Card Factory first opened its doors in Wakefield in 1997.
Since then the company has soared to become a high street staple, with over 1,000 shops across the UK and Ireland.
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.
Scotland’s high streets hammered
The Cumbernauld Card Factory is just the latest business to announce it will be closing.
Businesses across the country, from independent outlets to massive chains, have been forced to close their doors as they feel the squeeze.
Rising costs and falling footfall have hammered everything from shops to bars and restaurants, even some that have been in their communities for DECADES.
Read more on the Scottish Sun
We recently told how a Glasgow pub which had been an “institution” on the city’s streets closed down after 25 years.
One pub brand with dozens of bars across the country also made the tough call to close down one of their Scots businesses.
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