Debenhams look likely to go under with 14000 jobs at risk

boromike85 said:
I don't think full-time working from home will be here to stay @ticker_tape. I can see it being hybrid, smaller offices with part-time wfh and part-time being office based. It is very different having an established team with established relationships working from home temporarily but over time people will move jobs and those relationships disappear. It is much more difficult to have any sort of working relationship with a team/co-worker if you've never met them. It is the social part of a team that is missing, asking quick questions to someone sat near by instead of a more formal call etc. There are people in my office of 20 that I haven't spoken to for 6 months because I haven't needed them professionally whereas in the office I'd speak to them a couple of times a week either socially or we hear each other talking about something we know the answer to and can jump in and help etc. Not so bad if I want to give them a ring to discuss because I know them but a new starter wouldn't have the same established relationship.
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This. I love working from home, the freedom to pop to my local shops at lunch time or have a walk around my village, but I miss the office. I'm in a strange situation as I'm currently building my own business and have no office to go to. My last role before I went solo, I worked from home for 18 months getting the business off the ground for someone, before we got a small rural office space when the team had grown to 4.

I fully plan on doing it again and any team members living locally enough, I'd expect in the office 3 days a week. (Though it has given me the confidence that I can hire people from anywhere in the country if its a great fit). Like you say its the team bonding element. Having a breakout area with a couple of sofas, and a tv screen (we used to watch an episode of mad men every Wednesday lunchtime as a team), outdoor seating area and making it a place people want to be. I've seen loads of surveys on Linkedin about what people want to do moving forward, pretty much no one says they want to wfh full time.
 
ticker_tape said:
People are now used to it Jostler. Some will never return, there was never that much work to in an office and its mainly repetative stuff. This will effect white collar mainly, as seen by key worker.
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Another corker 😂 Do you mean all those key workers that are being made redundant in droves atm as the shops close down?
 
The world is changing I agree but I am not sure posters are quite aware the economics of retail is changing too, from say 5 years ago when they was a much bigger difference is say rents on the High Street and a warehouse rent

For example the House of Fraser building is the Boro is probably occupied rent free by Mike Ashley. He will pay the running costs and most of the business rates or possibly all. Rents have come down a lot in some high streets. where as warehouse rents have risen. The property companies making decent profits are the warehouse owners not necessarily the online retailers. High street property owners are really struggling as they cut rents. With time business rates will start to even out more due to Government policy and rateable values been modified.

The analogy of analogue to digital photography to clothes and food retailing is partly false. We don't really touch or smell or taste photos its their image which makes them. But food and clothes are physical and always will be.

Discount codes are available in store as well as ordering online. I have M&S Sparks discounts on my card same for Shell. LIDL have just introduced a discount through a Smartphone to use in store only. Tescos send me vouchers in the post and Sainsburys do too.

People are only getting free deliveries with Amazon Prime because Amazon are picking up the cost of delivery. the actual cost (not charge) for delivery is still there, unless a lot of deliveries are made to the same house from the same warehouse. Amazon are not making much profit out of direct retail, they make money out of charging other retailers to use their site and they also make money out of cloud computing and surprisingly have recently bought a High Street retailer (Whole Food Markets). I don't find Amazon prices really cheap especially with delivery charges added, I don't have Prime, but if I added £3 to a delivery I would say I could buy better on some products off line. I sometimes use click and collect as deliveries are free and I can walk to the relevant shop. I do like the Internet for searching out difficult things to buy.

I can understand if people don't leave their house much, online shopping is quick and convenient and for people who see shopping as a chore being quick and convenient are major selling points. I also think we are in the early part of online shopping (only 20 years old) and there is still some novelty value from shopping from your sofa or bed or on the train. Retailers are still willing to subsidise in case of being left out. It also works well for services that are intangible (non physical) like music and video streaming, gaming, gambling, financial services, dating, a lot of stuff that used to be in newspapers.

High Street/Retail Park Shops to go :

Bookies
Some Banks/Building societies
Amusement Arcades
Post Offices
Estate Agents
Newspaper Offices
Newsagents
Insurance shops
Stationers
Some chemists
Some florists
Some phone shops
Some pubs (Young people drink less)
Taxis offices
Travel Agents

I agree towns and small cities will be hit most over time. But they will survive, humans are still 50% social creatures - note how concerts have taken off over the last 20 years (before CV19), the same for cinema. In the 1980s we were told cinema would be dead in 30 years time, there are more screens now. Rents and rates will adjust to help the High Street and certainly slow down its decline. Ref shops on Teesside, the building of Teesside Park damaged many local high streets. as well as a slightly declining population and slightly declining local incomes and of course the Internet.

I hope we are left with more than just Amazon online to shop from in 20 years time. We can all do our bit and avoid using them and their like.
 
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LONDON (Reuters) - British retailer Marks & Spencer (MKS.L) said on Tuesday it plans to cut a further 7,000 jobs, dealing the latest blow to the country’s beleaguered retail sector from the COVID-19 crisis.

M&S said last month it would shed 950 jobs as part of a store management revamp. Its latest round of redundancies will impact its central support centre, regional management and UK stores over the next three months.

The cuts add to thousands already announced by other major British retailers, including Boots (WBA.O), John Lewis [JLPLC.UL], Dixons Carphone (DC.L) and WH Smith (SMWH.L).
M&S said it expected a significant proportion of the latest cuts would be through voluntary departures and early retirement.

“These proposals are an important step in becoming a leaner, faster business set up to serve changing customer needs and we are committed to supporting colleagues through this time,” said Chief Executive Steve Rowe.

M&S said group sales were down 19.2% year-on-year in the 19 weeks to Aug. 20, which included part of Britain’s lockdown period, with clothing and home sales down 49.1% and food sales down 1.1%.

In the latter eight weeks of the period clothing and home sales were down 29.9%, while food sales were up 2.5%.

Worrying times - especially for those looking for their first jobs.
 
Jostler said:
Hopefully, a large proportion are early retirees and future impact is minimal.
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Interesting commentary today regarding ‘retail’
‘if this was a car factory there would be a huge focus and ‘cry for help’. As it is retail and effects many areas it kind of goes under the radar.
 
We're looking at a very big army of reserve labour, in Capitalist society this translates to cutting wages and reducing rights, a further weakening of trade unions.

The knock on is public spending to be slashed, services to further dwindle, poor health to increase and crime to rocket. We already have evidence of this from the last 40 years following Thatcher's experiment.

At least we've got the right people running the show to stand firm in a crisis.
 
1finny said:
Interesting commentary today regarding ‘retail’
‘if this was a car factory there would be a huge focus and ‘cry for help’. As it is retail and effects many areas it kind of goes under the radar.
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Although awful news for those involved, I suppose it's seen as less of a problem if it's nationwide, rather than a concentration in one area as theoretically those individuals have a decent chance of picking up another role. There's 1035 M&S Stores (google search), equating to less than 7 per store (though I presume the affected stores will have more and the local food outlets will be less affected). As I previously mentioned, hopefully there's a good chunk are in the 60-70 range and were planning to hang up their boots in the near future anyway.
 
I heard some time ago that M&S were looking at moving out of town centres as much as possible, we've seen it across Teesside and I think there's only one left to go, that may be announced shortly.
 
As already said this was happening anyway, but has been accelerated by Covid.

Post covid, when it's no longer the danger it is today, the shops will largely NOT return. There will be a lot of empty high street properties in need of use. That creates opportunity, I expect to see the entertainment and hospitality sector rapidly increase in a couple of years. All kinds of novel and innovative use of indoor high street space for fun and frolicking. If you go back 10 years nobody knew what an escape room was, if you go back a further 20 years then lazerquest didn't exist and another 20 before that there were no bowling allies. Something new and interesting will sweep in, along with lots of eateries. The high st will be a socialising space much more than a retail one.
 
BoroMart said:
As already said this was happening anyway, but has been accelerated by Covid.

Post covid, when it's no longer the danger it is today, the shops will largely NOT return. There will be a lot of empty high street properties in need of use. That creates opportunity, I expect to see the entertainment and hospitality sector rapidly increase in a couple of years. All kinds of novel and innovative use of indoor high street space for fun and frolicking. If you go back 10 years nobody knew what an escape room was, if you go back a further 20 years then lazerquest didn't exist and another 20 before that there were no bowling allies. Something new and interesting will sweep in, along with lots of eateries. The high st will be a socialising space much more than a retail one.
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This all depends on entertainment sector surviving COVID - venues are really struggling to survive.
 
Robert Nichols said:
This all depends on entertainment sector surviving COVID - venues are really struggling to survive.
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I agree they are right now, and businesses will certainly go to the wall, but be it a year or 4, there will be a point when the threat of covid subsides and new businesses will spring up and take these high st buildings. There will be short term pain, but long term gain in this sector.
 
BoroMart said:
I agree they are right now, and businesses will certainly go to the wall, but be it a year or 4, there will be a point when the threat of covid subsides and new businesses will spring up and take these high st buildings. There will be short term pain, but long term gain in this sector.
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The killer is - how long can anyone in leisure/hospitality/clothing retail keep going?
This virus ain’t going away anytime soon and if you ignore the optimistic hype (I understand why it is out there) a vacccine is still over a year away at best.

That is a long time to go without much income
 
Unfortunately I don't think you can have just entertainment. It needs to be a mix of entertainment/restaurants/pubs etc and shops. People go shopping and then do the other things while they are in the area. Footfall is important for a lot of those businesses. Once the shops have gone then the appeal of setting up a reliant business also goes away. If more people are working from home this will also reduce daytime footfall in town centres anyway. It means town centres will be deserted during the day.

I think these venues will have a place but they will follow the retail. Businesses will move around to wherever is cheapest and they have access to the biggest customer base. If councils decide that rates in out of town retail parks need to go up to make up for the drop in town centres then something else might change that is different to the high street/retail park model.
 
The Covid19 effect on many businesses is starting to disappear, it's temporary anyway. A vaccine will be found or the virus will die out.

The online shopping and Brexit effects are going to be longer term and will cause more societal changes.
 
boromike85 said:
I don't think full-time working from home will be here to stay @ticker_tape. I can see it being hybrid, smaller offices with part-time wfh and part-time being office based. It is very different having an established team with established relationships working from home temporarily but over time people will move jobs and those relationships disappear. It is much more difficult to have any sort of working relationship with a team/co-worker if you've never met them. It is the social part of a team that is missing, asking quick questions to someone sat near by instead of a more formal call etc. There are people in my office of 20 that I haven't spoken to for 6 months because I haven't needed them professionally whereas in the office I'd speak to them a couple of times a week either socially or we hear each other talking about something we know the answer to and can jump in and help etc. Not so bad if I want to give them a ring to discuss because I know them but a new starter wouldn't have the same established relationship.
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I dont think we will ever or should ever go back to the offices in the way we did in the past. The one benefit from all of this is not having to sit in the car for a 2 hour commute each day, having to get up at 6 to beat the traffic, eating awful on the go food etc. Huge benefit working at home not wasting time on the commute and actually having the time to eat properly and be finished at a decent time. It feels absolutely life changing to have so much extra free time and I feel so much healthier for it too, from speaking to others it seems like this is a similar story everywhere.
Also from a business view not having to pay thousands to rent offices every year must be a massive plus.

Just hope it continues and the government stop trying to force people back into offices
 
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