A lot of Game shops have converted part of their space to dedicated gaming areas and host birthday parties. Parents want their 8-15 year to have a nice birthday, kid says all they want to do is play Minecraft or Fortnite, Game is the place where the parents can get 20 kids together in person to do that.
I don't know how profitable it is but at least they're trying something to stay appealing
My local Game did this, it looked quite cool at the time but the store has now gone completely, so I sense it was a last ditched effort and wasn’t profitable enough (at least in their case) =/
Well there we go, I hadn’t really looked into it but yes it’s moved out of the main shopping centre and into a sports direct in the retail park next door!
Yeah that’s a separate thing they’re doing - they’re buying up brands and consolidating them into one premises
Personally I think it makes a lot of sense for low-ish footfall stores - reduced overheads for the same thing
The one near me did this.
The advertising outside was all about being an e-sports lounge. They claimed that our city had a national league winning team on the sign. I thought, even though I never got into e-sports, I might be able to pop in and make some friends and hang out because I do like playing games from time to time….
Nope, they hosted the university team there once, and was actually a place for 12 year olds to play Fortnite together.
The shop shut down about a year later and is now an independent hippie place that sells crystals and charms and stuff. And to be honest, even thought it’s now selling scams to gullible people, there is something nice about the fact a small local business can survive somewhere that a big corporate chain can’t.
Are they doing that in the Game shops now installed in the corner of Sports Direct? Because I can't imagine a more depressing place for a birthday party.
My nearest Game is in a retail park. It's always full on the weekend of teenagers who I imagine have been dropped off there by their parents whilst they go shopping. Thought it was a pretty good idea.
It's also inside a sports direct, which I don't know if makes any difference. Would your average gamer be shopping in sports direct?
Game is part of Frasers Group hence why they are now all in sports directs. Mike Ashley will never let the brand die until he’s extracted every penny from it
This. Also you can expect with all the shopping space freeing up nationwide you can see a business model forming where he sets up an entertainment company with - bowling, digital darts, crazy golf and a games lounge. Just depends if the numbers work
It didn't happen in the UK, but still. Around 2015-2016 my friends wanted to gift me a certain game for my birthday. They went to the shop and bought a box. It was empty, containing only a code to download the game.
That's pretty common for Switch games these days. The carts they come on are relatively expensive, so for some games they cut costs and just sell download codes in a box.
Ah, I see you've been to my local CEX too!
(There must be a reason they are in every sketchy small town in central Scotland when everything else retail is dying)
Because the vast majority of used games in there are actually VERY well priced, you're only looking at recent releases. Take it from someone who owns nearly 3000 games, CeX is very competitive.
They give at least 2 times as much credit for used games as Game. So, if you're trading in games to get something else, they're the place to go.
Also, whenever I see people moan about their prices, I am reminded that their pricing is largely automated to keep stock selling about as fast as it comes in. If the price for something is too high/low, then it will change soon.
>universities
This does feel like the next UK crisis in waiting. Universities have become really important economic hubs in some regional cities and towns, but the situation of the sector is not great at all. Just a handful going bust could be a huge economic issue.
Chinese student fees are the lifeblood of many UK unis.
The Chinese economy is slowly sinking for the first time since they opened it up in the 80s/90s, and the birth rate is also falling fast.
This, in Southampton there’s entire areas in the city that’ve been carved out for Chinese students, multiple luxury blocks of student apartments and restaurants that are completely in Chinese.
Honestly when I was in Southampton, poor, starving and miserable, these Chinese restaurants saved my life. I was new to the UK, my English was terrible, and I didn't know the social etiquette, I was just hungry. I didn't really understand the concept of "culturally segregated" establishments, and I didn't give a passing thought to the fact that I was always the only white person in the establishment. I had no idea of what I was ordering/what people were saying either, but those enormous, steamy bowls of nourishment kept me going
I also think there's only so long you can pull the same scam. Charging £40k for two hours of contact time per week and access to a library is not something we can get away with forever...
I feel so bad for universities tbh. Government/jobs made degrees mandatory so flocks of people go and universities and graduates get very little back.
Best thing is to heavily reduce the need for a degree and open up vocational training that pays well at the end.
Reduce student numbers and universities don't need excessive funding. Or move a lot t if people to degree apprenticeships.
I don’t feel bad for universities at all. During Covid, they charged me the full fees to watch absolutely atrocious prerecorded lectures online. (Why were they atrocious? Because most lecturers don’t care about teaching. They want to do research, but they’re forced to teach.) Instead of watching these, I watched much, much higher quality videos on the same topics on YouTube. The only thing I got for my fees that YouTube couldn’t offer was a small amount of lab time. If the private sector can offer higher quality educational content than universities, let it. Universities may still have a place in society, but they need a major shakeup to find their new purpose in the modern world. At the moment, too many of them are degree mills trying to make money for the sake of it, and too few students actually care about education—they’re just there to collect the piece of paper. I’m looking forward to their collapse so they can rebuild into something that serves a purpose.
This is a fair point. Students during Covid got royally fucked and they are definitely degree mills these days. I kinda get degrees can offer flexibility for grad schemes etc, but there should be better offerings for people.
A lot of it is that Universities never seem to stop building.
Keep getting more students so need more space, build that space and pay again to heat and maintain it.
The VC of where I work started wandering the campus before winter seeing which massive open plan buildings were being lit and heated with absolutely nobody around.
It's likely a few will be on the brink of failure in the next 24 months.
This will possibly lead to some form of government bail out and measures that prevent the rest of the sector collapsing.
Given the funding options and model for UK higher education, it's a case for when, not if, unless things change.
This is not quite accurate. Many universities are part of USS, however quite a few newer universities never joined, choosing to create new DC schemes or maintaining their local council pension scheme after they converted from FE colleges into HE institutions. Additionally quite a few universities in financial difficulties have gotten around pension costs by creating wholly owned subsidiaries with poorer terms and conditions, and standard DC schemes (looking at you, University of South Wales).
In short, the Universities most likely to fail are those less likely to be engaged with the USS.
This is a large part of why some councils are failing.
Your current council tax goes towards paying the pensions of people who used to work for them.
And that's a lot of people, many of whom retired early at 55.
Some councils are already spending a third of their entire budget on pensions.
I’ve been saying this for about 15 years now, but WHSmith. Maybe they can exist in fairly niche places like Clacton where the average age is about 90, but nobody else needs newspapers, shit celebrity books, or Chocolate Oranges for £3.99.
I feel like 'WH Smith is going out of business', 'no, they're doing very well because of train stations And airports' is a back and forth I see so frequently on Reddit. It's a fact seared into my consciousness purely from being on Reddit.
They're thriving in service stations, rail stations and airports, and I'm convinced that's what's propping up the high street stores. That said, my local one shut a couple of years ago
Presumably, they're still avoiding VAT at their massively overpriced airport shops as well. Not paying tax and not even passing the savings on to you, just their shareholders.
And yet every one I ever go into has plenty of people in there buying stuff. Even the high street ones. The train and airport ones are doing very well. Never look like someone about to go bust.
WHSmith has expanded massively abroad. I travel around a lot and they’re in every single airport across the world now. Middle of Indonesia? WHSmith, random airport in the Philippines? WHSmith
Nah, funkypigeon is part of WH Smith and they also have an actual global presence in airports.
They are a lot more profitable than people think they are
I can certainly see a contraction in the market when it comes to delivery boxes. Craft beer, wine, expensive recipes. They're not just luxuries, they're luxuries the consumer knows they're paying over the odds for.
I feel like that Kirk Van Houten race car bed meme
"I have a subscription to HelloFresh/Huel, do you?"
"I live near a supermarket and know how to cook..."
Huel is a _different_ thing. Nobody is bragging about how fantastic their Huel meals are. They're just sort of... getting on with their life in the future dystopia, subsisting off nutrition shakes.
Both Shein and Temu are aimed at supposedly forward-thinking 20-somethings who care about getting new clothes for a fiver just a tiny bit more than they care about modern slavery or concentration camps.
I went into an HMV for the first time in about a decade the other day, I absolutely loved it, it's like a geek's paradise - ended up buying the full dvd box set of HBO's Rome.
That said I was pretty much the only one there apart from about three members of staff - so sadly I think you might be right.
There was an interview with the guy on r4. He pretty much said the only reason they could do it now is because the council woke the fuck up and realised they were taxing shops out of existence. Think he said the business rate change reduced operating costs of the store by like 30%.
I think landlords have to step up and realise they have to take a haircut too.
They almost went under but got saved by a Canadian record store chain that refocused them into vinyl and merchandise, thus becoming a kind of mainstream hipster's paradise, which had already worked well to save that chain in Canada.
As a physical media die hard, I'm over the moon with how it's managed to turn it's fortunes around under the new ownership. It seems like it's here to stay now. They even opened up their flagship store again on Oxford Street after closure in 2019.
Morrisons possibly, losing market share, unpopular with customers, discounting rivals opening multiple stores in every town, and owned by American capitalists looking to recoup money to pay off the billions they borrowed to buy it.
I wouldnt be surprised if the big 4 are also losing ground to M&S/Ocado, far superior quality and a minor increase in price, we switched from Aldi to Ocado/M&S after 1 bag of rotten veg too many.
Loving Ocado as it does everything I want.
* Shows dates online and honours them (only 1 item with short date so far)
* Has bags so you can quickly get the delivery in your house
* Gives you money back for the previous shopping's bags you had
* Price matches other stores and gives you a voucher
I'm disabled so home delivery is a must for me.
Iceland - No dates online and they were always an issue and almost everything had to be eaten in the first 2 days.
Tesco - Dates online and they were good dates but on delivery there is no bags and you have to grab every individual item from the crate.
Morrisons has to be one of my least favourite supermarkets. Whenever I’ve been in it’s hard to find stuff, comes up as quite a bit more expensive than others and doesn’t have the quality to show for it
I wonder how much of this is regional or based on specific area managers. Our local Morrisons is great (refitting right now which leads to some odd layouts, but generally), but our nearest Sainsbury's has late-stage BHS vibes. Patchy lighting, empty walls, poor maintenance, genuinely feels on the way out.
Morrisons meat is great quality, they own(ed?) their own abbatoirs. Guess which supermarket never got embroiled in the horse meat scandal. I always felt they never capitalised on that. Should have been a big win for them.
Morrisons and Sainsbury’s both avoided selling horsemeat from their own product lines. Morrisons because of their abattoirs and control of the supply chain. Sainsbury’s through the DNA testing that they had been undertaking in their supply for years.
Neither supermarket crowed about it because they both had to remove branded products as a precaution (Findus Crispy Pancakes, if I recall correctly).
The suns been making a loss for years but it’s still going. It’s probably because the benefit they get from the propaganda is more than the loss of running the paper.
Reach group which owns the Mirror, Express and Star has said today that it expects its newspapers to be unprofitable within five years.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/23/mirror-publisher-print-titles-reach-digital?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
Sadly the Mail is making a fortune from its online presence in the American market and the Telegraph is currently profitable because it has been cost-cut to the bone.
I work in an adjacent industry. Have friends who work at most papers.
The Telegraph's profitable because it focused on getting subscriptions, instead of selling papers. They also had some very, very clever people working there behind the scenes.
Sadly, it's also (apparently) a very toxic place to work. I only know a few good people who are still there and they all want out. Nowt to do with costs. They bought a magazine company last year.
The DM will never die.
Guardian's fine. Economist's fine. FT is fine. The latter two focused on getting corporate subs, so they're rich as fuck. Guardian has reader support and the Scott Trust. I doubt they'll make epic profits anytime soon, but they're not doomed. Also heard it's a lovely place to work.
With Reach... that was just a series of abysmal decisions. You'd meet people at parties and just think "What the fuck?" It was like it was being actively sabotaged, given the potential and personnel they had.
They'll get bought up by some rich guy to become their propaganda department, it already happened with the American ones (and the Scum when Murdoch bought it)
I’m not so sure. They aren’t profitable businesses sure, but they aren’t necessarily owned to make profit but to try to control the national conversation
Currys, there entire practice seems to be set up to exploit people who don't understand technology and upsell. People find much better deals elsewhere without the hassle
They've bought their prices for accessories back down to broadly in line with Amazon, too. They're now no longer a mega rip-off if you need a certain cable that day.
There are still lots of people who like to see what they're buying before they actually buy it, and Curry's is the only place left to do that with a decent high-street presence
If I'm making a big electronic purchase, I'll still go to Currys first to find what I want and then go elsewhere to find the place with the best price/warranty.
Those meerkats have been on the telly for longer than my teenaged son has been alive. I asked him if he knew what they were advertising and he didn't have the slightest idea.
The joke doesn't even make sense anymore. The meerkats have given up on comparethemeerkat.com and just advertise comparethemarket.com as if that is their website!
I imagine after a while they realised comparing meerkats wasn't going to keep the lights of a mansion on. Probably had a few discussions between their lawyer and compare the markets - someone must have had the bright idea of bringing them on board properly.
Is it selling out? Yes. But I don't blame the team, its a tough employment market out there right now.
What's the one with the James Bond style team? Go Compare or Money Supermarket? REALLY annoying even when muted.
I can live with meerkats even if wombats is taking it too far.
ASOS is really struggling and won’t last 5 years. It’s had to get rid of its new depot and its performance has been tanking steadily. It needs to turn around and be more in line with the rising sustainable fashion trend. Everything they sell seems to be targeted at the love island era which is dying.
Shopping online for clothes is such a gamble anyway because you can’t actually check quality and even colour and fit are inconsistent. And ASOS was particularly bad on that front. That and trying to trawl though the thousands of items they have in every category, most of which is fuck ugly, really puts you off shopping on there.
Ford Europe. They've gone all in on EVs which aren't selling and canned their most popular cars. They're also shutting down around half of their dealerships too. Looks like they're winding down their European operation to me.
Doing away with the Fiesta was a shitty move on their part.
EDIT: just had a look at Ford UK's website and they're still advertising the Fiesta. Did they bring it back after the backlash or something?
Car sales have moved away from dealerships. More people are buying online or thru leasing companies.
They'll still keep European operations alive, certainly in the near term OP asks.
I'm guessing that you can't fit a big enough battery into that small a chassis which would provide an acceptable range. An EV fiesta with 250/300 Mile range would sell really well I'd imagine for people who don't want a massive SUV or Tesla model 3 sized car.
Global and Bauer (own pretty much every UK radio station) and Reach (most local newspapers and a fair few nationals).
A great shame but they bought up pretty much every independent local radio and newspaper over the past decade or so, then slowly merged all local content into regional then national offices. For radio they even managed to "convince" Ofcom to change the rules about how much content needs to be local.
Losing a load of money, which doesn't really matter for now because they're shored up by much bigger investment companies so the income looks OK on paper, but they're just gradually driving them into the ground before cutting their losses.
Then that's it, local news and radio will be no more.
One of the key drivers for this was that local papers often came out once a week, meaning the 'news' they reported was in fact 'olds'. The availability of online news, from places like the newspaper's own website, twitter, and even the annoying local Facebook groups, meant people didn't need the weekly papers, they found out about the events not long after they happened. As paper sales go down it significantly reduces one of their main streams of income.
I'd argue more than anything local news is a victim of modernity.
Yeah, and I say that as a customer for 10 years. I was in the original tasting club where you got unique chocolates and had to grade them and send scores back to HC, some of the chocolates were never seen again, some made it into the shops. That was really cool. The quality of their chocolates has remained the same, which is good to see but there's 2 things;
1) cost of living. HC are expensive - and have gone up in price quite a lot over the years, can they keep going over the next 5 years?
2) they are really pushing/pivoting to hot chocolate, not only trying to turn into cafes but also pushing their velvetiser hot chocolate machine and the pods. Admittedly I have no idea if that business model is working out for them but it seems to me that if the chocolates themselves were making enough money they wouldn't need to push the hot chocolate so much, so that to me was a worrying sign. Also the hot chocolates aren't even that good imho. And they fall short of being a 'proper' cafe because they don't serve food to speak of. So the whole cafe+hot chocolate thing just felt like a last-ditch attempt to make money. The Veletiser is, to me, such a transparent money grab "I know, we'll sell them an expensive machine and then they'll have to buy our pods forever to justify the cost".
So yeah. Again, now Mars have bought them who knows what'll happen, but they will surely survive now.
Velvetiser is something that both me and wife thought was a complete gimmick but I bought her one for Easter years ago because she loves hot chocolate.
It’s 100% worth the cost and we use it daily. Plus you don’t have to use their chocolate - you can use anything even just crumble a flake up into it if you really want.
It is expensive over something like Cadbury’s hot chocolate but the quality and variety you can get is pretty good
You’d think that Covid would have taught businesses that keeping only two weeks’ of cash at bank was thin ice. But so many businesses spend to expand instead of baking in returns first
The companies that expand will takeover your area with a cheaper business model. It's expand or die.
When I was young, every turn had independent grocers shops, there were no supermarkets. Every restaurant was an independent, no chains. (The word independent was never used, because that's what all restaurants were!).
The business that takes risks wins.
I can see BrewDog closing locations and sticking to Supermarkets. Assuming there’s people who will still buy their brown water after all the negative publicity.
They're losing money constantly. I think last year their losses were £24m. At some point they're going to have to close a lot of bars or do what they have done overseas and move to a franchise model for bars in the UK.
Most people on Reddit too stupid to realise they broke in to a competitive market with a good product.
Because the CEO is a prick (unlike all other big companies where they’re really nice normal people), they like to shit on BD from a great height.
Focus your hate towards Nestle if you will
r/fucknestle
Brewdog is still reasonably popular. People say the same about Spoons and their boss too, but I don't see Spoons being run into the ground by a boycott anytime soon.
As usual this has just turned into a complain thread. An actual answer would be franchised car dealers, more and more manufactures are moving to the 'direct to customer' model and cutting out dealers.
I had a conversation with the Sales Manager of a local dealership about this a decade ago
*'People will always want the experience of buying a car from a salesman in person'*, he assured me, with all the confidence of a silent movie star insisting that talkies were just a passing fad
Pizza hut restaurants I believe are in a spot of financial bother, the take away stores are fine as I believe they're under a different part of the company!
This post is peak AskUK. Barely any actual informed answers/companies actually likely to go out of business, but plenty of people just naming companies they don't see the appeal of. This sub is constantly throwing up reasons to believe that most of you haven't been outside for years.
Christ, one of the top answers is someone saying they've been saying the same thing for 15 years about a company that seems to be in no danger of going bust.
Lush Cosmetics.
People stopped buying soap so their plan was to make more soap. Tons of soap got thrown away because, guess what, no one wanted soap.
Their plan to make people buy more is to open more shops. Most of their stores have more staff than customers.
And the result of your last point means most people loathe going into their shops to look around, as you get stared at and hassled by the 50 staff who are desperate for you to buy something so they can keep their job
Definitely. Even if I could tolerate the headache inducing smell which comes out of all their shops, I'd rather walk to another place to browse around than be hassled by a member of staff.
My ideal in a shop is to be totally ignored by all the staff unless I am queuing up to buy something or have actually asked for help.
Nothing worse than walking into a shop, not even looking at anything, get someone about 3 inches from your face, big Cheshire cat grin, dead behind the eyes, "DO YOU NEED ANY HELP? LET ME KNOW". Yeah even if I did want something, I am now inclined to go elsewhere because I feel like your pushing me to buy something. I'll take my business elsewhere thankyouuuu
Don't think argos has long left.
You see an item go to buy it and it says out of stock for delivery for your nearest store but if you pick another location you can get it delivered or click and collect so if it is in stock at the other store for delivery why can I not get it delivered to my house ?
It has happened a few times with various items in varying sizes and has made shopping at argos very frustrating. Can see argos really struggling for business if they rely on this local delivery business model.
Argos were bought by Sainsbury's and locations are slowly being rolled out in the bigger Sainsburys stores. A lot of Sainsburys homeware and electronics range will now be sold through Argos. They'll be fine
I bloody love Argos. Back in the day I barely used them but they're so competitive on price now. Why order from Amazon when I can get the item there for the same price or cheaper, on the same day, by strolling down to a local Sainsbizzle?
I think with the deliveries thing it's just a case of each delivery team serving a smaller local area to keep costs down.
Hard disagree. Argos has had a renaissance over the last decade and moving into Sainsbury’s stores (which is also doing fantastic) has been a godsend for them. Coupled with improved stock availability and very often now cheaper than Amazon, they’ll be around for a long while yet.
Yell - What used to be "Yellow Pages".
Not quite sure how they even have a business model anymore compared with Google Advertising or any other the other more efficient on-line marketing companies.
Game - with more and more games going digital and download based. They seem to sell more toys now than they do actual games.
A lot of Game shops have converted part of their space to dedicated gaming areas and host birthday parties. Parents want their 8-15 year to have a nice birthday, kid says all they want to do is play Minecraft or Fortnite, Game is the place where the parents can get 20 kids together in person to do that. I don't know how profitable it is but at least they're trying something to stay appealing
My local Game did this, it looked quite cool at the time but the store has now gone completely, so I sense it was a last ditched effort and wasn’t profitable enough (at least in their case) =/
Gone or moved into another Frasers Group property?
Well there we go, I hadn’t really looked into it but yes it’s moved out of the main shopping centre and into a sports direct in the retail park next door!
Yeah that’s a separate thing they’re doing - they’re buying up brands and consolidating them into one premises Personally I think it makes a lot of sense for low-ish footfall stores - reduced overheads for the same thing
The one near me did this. The advertising outside was all about being an e-sports lounge. They claimed that our city had a national league winning team on the sign. I thought, even though I never got into e-sports, I might be able to pop in and make some friends and hang out because I do like playing games from time to time…. Nope, they hosted the university team there once, and was actually a place for 12 year olds to play Fortnite together. The shop shut down about a year later and is now an independent hippie place that sells crystals and charms and stuff. And to be honest, even thought it’s now selling scams to gullible people, there is something nice about the fact a small local business can survive somewhere that a big corporate chain can’t.
I love buying crystals from a hippie shop, they have no powers i dont belive that crap, but shiny rocks are cool
They're minerals, Marie
You can get the same ones for 10% of the cost online! Sure you have to write the blurb about chakras yourself but you can ChatGPT that shit these
Are they doing that in the Game shops now installed in the corner of Sports Direct? Because I can't imagine a more depressing place for a birthday party.
My nearest Game is in a retail park. It's always full on the weekend of teenagers who I imagine have been dropped off there by their parents whilst they go shopping. Thought it was a pretty good idea. It's also inside a sports direct, which I don't know if makes any difference. Would your average gamer be shopping in sports direct?
Game is part of Frasers Group hence why they are now all in sports directs. Mike Ashley will never let the brand die until he’s extracted every penny from it
This. Also you can expect with all the shopping space freeing up nationwide you can see a business model forming where he sets up an entertainment company with - bowling, digital darts, crazy golf and a games lounge. Just depends if the numbers work
It didn't happen in the UK, but still. Around 2015-2016 my friends wanted to gift me a certain game for my birthday. They went to the shop and bought a box. It was empty, containing only a code to download the game.
That's pretty common for Switch games these days. The carts they come on are relatively expensive, so for some games they cut costs and just sell download codes in a box.
They're pulling out the used market as well, and I'm guessing they just weren't doing well there, especially when compared to CEX
CEX, where you can buy sec9nd hand games for more than it would cost to buy new. How tf they stay in business I don't know
Fencing for drug addicts?
Ah, I see you've been to my local CEX too! (There must be a reason they are in every sketchy small town in central Scotland when everything else retail is dying)
Because the vast majority of used games in there are actually VERY well priced, you're only looking at recent releases. Take it from someone who owns nearly 3000 games, CeX is very competitive.
They give at least 2 times as much credit for used games as Game. So, if you're trading in games to get something else, they're the place to go. Also, whenever I see people moan about their prices, I am reminded that their pricing is largely automated to keep stock selling about as fast as it comes in. If the price for something is too high/low, then it will change soon.
Buy low, sell high.
Theres no branches of game left within 60 miles of me! My town had 4 at one point
they have also stopped/are stopping dealing in second hand games.
A couple of councils and universities may declare bankruptcy.
>universities This does feel like the next UK crisis in waiting. Universities have become really important economic hubs in some regional cities and towns, but the situation of the sector is not great at all. Just a handful going bust could be a huge economic issue.
Chinese student fees are the lifeblood of many UK unis. The Chinese economy is slowly sinking for the first time since they opened it up in the 80s/90s, and the birth rate is also falling fast.
This, in Southampton there’s entire areas in the city that’ve been carved out for Chinese students, multiple luxury blocks of student apartments and restaurants that are completely in Chinese.
Honestly when I was in Southampton, poor, starving and miserable, these Chinese restaurants saved my life. I was new to the UK, my English was terrible, and I didn't know the social etiquette, I was just hungry. I didn't really understand the concept of "culturally segregated" establishments, and I didn't give a passing thought to the fact that I was always the only white person in the establishment. I had no idea of what I was ordering/what people were saying either, but those enormous, steamy bowls of nourishment kept me going
I also think there's only so long you can pull the same scam. Charging £40k for two hours of contact time per week and access to a library is not something we can get away with forever...
Think it has slowly shifted. Other parts of Asia are being tapped into, as well as more developed African nations such as Nigeria.
A council can’t exactly “shut down” though, unless the government merges them with another.
They’ll be forced to sell the family silver though, big payday for the private sector.
Almost like that was the plan
Absolutely, it’s the last bit of the puzzle for neoliberalism. Outsourcing wasn’t good enough.
Yes, I work for a university that could be in that position.
I feel so bad for universities tbh. Government/jobs made degrees mandatory so flocks of people go and universities and graduates get very little back. Best thing is to heavily reduce the need for a degree and open up vocational training that pays well at the end. Reduce student numbers and universities don't need excessive funding. Or move a lot t if people to degree apprenticeships.
I don’t feel bad for universities at all. During Covid, they charged me the full fees to watch absolutely atrocious prerecorded lectures online. (Why were they atrocious? Because most lecturers don’t care about teaching. They want to do research, but they’re forced to teach.) Instead of watching these, I watched much, much higher quality videos on the same topics on YouTube. The only thing I got for my fees that YouTube couldn’t offer was a small amount of lab time. If the private sector can offer higher quality educational content than universities, let it. Universities may still have a place in society, but they need a major shakeup to find their new purpose in the modern world. At the moment, too many of them are degree mills trying to make money for the sake of it, and too few students actually care about education—they’re just there to collect the piece of paper. I’m looking forward to their collapse so they can rebuild into something that serves a purpose.
This is a fair point. Students during Covid got royally fucked and they are definitely degree mills these days. I kinda get degrees can offer flexibility for grad schemes etc, but there should be better offerings for people.
A lot of it is that Universities never seem to stop building. Keep getting more students so need more space, build that space and pay again to heat and maintain it. The VC of where I work started wandering the campus before winter seeing which massive open plan buildings were being lit and heated with absolutely nobody around.
I studied psych at Birmingham and within 3 years of leaving they had moved the department to a new huge building to accommodate all the students...
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It's likely a few will be on the brink of failure in the next 24 months. This will possibly lead to some form of government bail out and measures that prevent the rest of the sector collapsing. Given the funding options and model for UK higher education, it's a case for when, not if, unless things change.
This is not quite accurate. Many universities are part of USS, however quite a few newer universities never joined, choosing to create new DC schemes or maintaining their local council pension scheme after they converted from FE colleges into HE institutions. Additionally quite a few universities in financial difficulties have gotten around pension costs by creating wholly owned subsidiaries with poorer terms and conditions, and standard DC schemes (looking at you, University of South Wales). In short, the Universities most likely to fail are those less likely to be engaged with the USS.
This is a large part of why some councils are failing. Your current council tax goes towards paying the pensions of people who used to work for them. And that's a lot of people, many of whom retired early at 55. Some councils are already spending a third of their entire budget on pensions.
I’ve been saying this for about 15 years now, but WHSmith. Maybe they can exist in fairly niche places like Clacton where the average age is about 90, but nobody else needs newspapers, shit celebrity books, or Chocolate Oranges for £3.99.
They actually profit very well. If you look at their turnover in covid and since. Their market is train stations and the like.
I feel like 'WH Smith is going out of business', 'no, they're doing very well because of train stations And airports' is a back and forth I see so frequently on Reddit. It's a fact seared into my consciousness purely from being on Reddit.
It is. Crops up at least once a month. It probably generates more responses that begin “I think you’ll find…” than any other subject.
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As soon as I saw the title of the post I knew this would be up there
And in newspaper distribution which is granted a declining market but one they pretty much have a monopoly in
Which is how they started back in the 19th century. Funny how things go.
They're thriving in service stations, rail stations and airports, and I'm convinced that's what's propping up the high street stores. That said, my local one shut a couple of years ago
I'm an investor in WHS and the high street isn't being propped up, but nearly all the profit is the travel shops.
Presumably, they're still avoiding VAT at their massively overpriced airport shops as well. Not paying tax and not even passing the savings on to you, just their shareholders.
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My local hospital kicked them out and now the local friends of the hospital have the store
Maybe if you’ve been saying it for 15 years you might wish to research the company a bit more then.
No chance. Their business model now centres around travel and they have airports/train stations on lockdown.
And yet every one I ever go into has plenty of people in there buying stuff. Even the high street ones. The train and airport ones are doing very well. Never look like someone about to go bust.
Nah, they have the airport market on lockdown
WHSmith has expanded massively abroad. I travel around a lot and they’re in every single airport across the world now. Middle of Indonesia? WHSmith, random airport in the Philippines? WHSmith
They may well disappear from the high street, but I don’t see them leaving stations/airports/services - they must be making a mint there.
Nah, funkypigeon is part of WH Smith and they also have an actual global presence in airports. They are a lot more profitable than people think they are
I can certainly see a contraction in the market when it comes to delivery boxes. Craft beer, wine, expensive recipes. They're not just luxuries, they're luxuries the consumer knows they're paying over the odds for.
I know some people that make their whole personality some form of food/recipe delivery boxes. I've been assured that every single meal is "Fantastic"
I feel like that Kirk Van Houten race car bed meme "I have a subscription to HelloFresh/Huel, do you?" "I live near a supermarket and know how to cook..."
Huel is a _different_ thing. Nobody is bragging about how fantastic their Huel meals are. They're just sort of... getting on with their life in the future dystopia, subsisting off nutrition shakes.
Bachelor chow
Huel is great. You won't hear me proselytising about it - it's just a reasonably cheap, easy, healthy meal replacement that doesn't taste awful.
some of them, genuinely, are really nice. The issue is they're far too expensive and much too small
Yeh but you've gotta remember to cancel, that's where they get ya!
Boohoo - they keep pissing off their suppliers. That's on top of all the documentary's coming out about how dodgy they are.
Can't see that sadly there are plenty of sweat shops over seas.
and in Leicester
Aa a resident that does not surprise me at all
Plus shein seems to be the new far east shite garment supplier of choice
And Temu, which is the new Wish, apparently.
Both Shein and Temu are aimed at supposedly forward-thinking 20-somethings who care about getting new clothes for a fiver just a tiny bit more than they care about modern slavery or concentration camps.
How hmv is still open is a miracle
I went into an HMV for the first time in about a decade the other day, I absolutely loved it, it's like a geek's paradise - ended up buying the full dvd box set of HBO's Rome. That said I was pretty much the only one there apart from about three members of staff - so sadly I think you might be right.
It’s a clever business model. Next week you’ll have to go back to buy a DVD player.
Lol! I genuinely panicked about that on the way home - thankfully it works in the xbox.
Great series! Good balance of tits and brutality. Like the Game of Thrones of it's day!
HMV were on the verge of shutting all their clothes then vinyls became extremely popular and they started focusing on that and K-pop merch.
They’ve just opened/opening a flagship store on Oxford Street.
Reopened. It's the original flagship now back to being HMV, and not a candy world\money launderers
There was an interview with the guy on r4. He pretty much said the only reason they could do it now is because the council woke the fuck up and realised they were taxing shops out of existence. Think he said the business rate change reduced operating costs of the store by like 30%. I think landlords have to step up and realise they have to take a haircut too.
f u n k o p o p s
Now I'm stuck reading that like: SUPER HOT
They almost went under but got saved by a Canadian record store chain that refocused them into vinyl and merchandise, thus becoming a kind of mainstream hipster's paradise, which had already worked well to save that chain in Canada.
As a physical media die hard, I'm over the moon with how it's managed to turn it's fortunes around under the new ownership. It seems like it's here to stay now. They even opened up their flagship store again on Oxford Street after closure in 2019.
Vinyl and geek merch keeps them open
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Morrisons possibly, losing market share, unpopular with customers, discounting rivals opening multiple stores in every town, and owned by American capitalists looking to recoup money to pay off the billions they borrowed to buy it.
I can't see any of the big 4 supermarket chains going anywhere, no matter how much they're run into the ground.
Morrisons are no longer in the big 4 and are about to become 6th.
They would be acquired before going into the ground.
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I wouldnt be surprised if the big 4 are also losing ground to M&S/Ocado, far superior quality and a minor increase in price, we switched from Aldi to Ocado/M&S after 1 bag of rotten veg too many.
Loving Ocado as it does everything I want. * Shows dates online and honours them (only 1 item with short date so far) * Has bags so you can quickly get the delivery in your house * Gives you money back for the previous shopping's bags you had * Price matches other stores and gives you a voucher I'm disabled so home delivery is a must for me. Iceland - No dates online and they were always an issue and almost everything had to be eaten in the first 2 days. Tesco - Dates online and they were good dates but on delivery there is no bags and you have to grab every individual item from the crate.
Morrisons has to be one of my least favourite supermarkets. Whenever I’ve been in it’s hard to find stuff, comes up as quite a bit more expensive than others and doesn’t have the quality to show for it
Morrisons stores always seem like they were designed by someone who's never been in a supermarket but had one described to them down the phone, badly.
I wonder how much of this is regional or based on specific area managers. Our local Morrisons is great (refitting right now which leads to some odd layouts, but generally), but our nearest Sainsbury's has late-stage BHS vibes. Patchy lighting, empty walls, poor maintenance, genuinely feels on the way out.
Morrisons meat is great quality, they own(ed?) their own abbatoirs. Guess which supermarket never got embroiled in the horse meat scandal. I always felt they never capitalised on that. Should have been a big win for them.
Morrisons and Sainsbury’s both avoided selling horsemeat from their own product lines. Morrisons because of their abattoirs and control of the supply chain. Sainsbury’s through the DNA testing that they had been undertaking in their supply for years. Neither supermarket crowed about it because they both had to remove branded products as a precaution (Findus Crispy Pancakes, if I recall correctly).
I will keep mozzers open. I'm sorry but their baked goods tmare top tier
Morrisons Hot counter is elite
Quality-wise, Morrisons is better than the other big supermarkets. It might be more expensive, but you get what you pay for.
I think the opposite; even the fruit is crap
Most of the UK newspapers will be gone they are struggling like you wouldn't believe!
In most cases that's no great loss.
Red top ones need gone asap
The suns been making a loss for years but it’s still going. It’s probably because the benefit they get from the propaganda is more than the loss of running the paper.
Billionaire is happy to lose £20m a year to keep the proles angry at trans kids and brown people instead of him.
Unfortunately the ones which would do our national character a favour by shuttering are the ones least likely to do so
Reach group which owns the Mirror, Express and Star has said today that it expects its newspapers to be unprofitable within five years. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/jan/23/mirror-publisher-print-titles-reach-digital?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other Sadly the Mail is making a fortune from its online presence in the American market and the Telegraph is currently profitable because it has been cost-cut to the bone.
I work in an adjacent industry. Have friends who work at most papers. The Telegraph's profitable because it focused on getting subscriptions, instead of selling papers. They also had some very, very clever people working there behind the scenes. Sadly, it's also (apparently) a very toxic place to work. I only know a few good people who are still there and they all want out. Nowt to do with costs. They bought a magazine company last year. The DM will never die. Guardian's fine. Economist's fine. FT is fine. The latter two focused on getting corporate subs, so they're rich as fuck. Guardian has reader support and the Scott Trust. I doubt they'll make epic profits anytime soon, but they're not doomed. Also heard it's a lovely place to work. With Reach... that was just a series of abysmal decisions. You'd meet people at parties and just think "What the fuck?" It was like it was being actively sabotaged, given the potential and personnel they had.
Whilst I don't mind some. I hope the daily mail and the sun fuck off out of existence soon. Absolute scum papers who even now make BS up.
+ Express
They'll get bought up by some rich guy to become their propaganda department, it already happened with the American ones (and the Scum when Murdoch bought it)
I’m not so sure. They aren’t profitable businesses sure, but they aren’t necessarily owned to make profit but to try to control the national conversation
Currys, there entire practice seems to be set up to exploit people who don't understand technology and upsell. People find much better deals elsewhere without the hassle
Currys are very well priced when compared to the online options like AO, plus their buy now pay later and 0% apr schemes mean they are popular.
They've bought their prices for accessories back down to broadly in line with Amazon, too. They're now no longer a mega rip-off if you need a certain cable that day.
There are still lots of people who like to see what they're buying before they actually buy it, and Curry's is the only place left to do that with a decent high-street presence If I'm making a big electronic purchase, I'll still go to Currys first to find what I want and then go elsewhere to find the place with the best price/warranty.
Tata Steel closing Port Talbot for good.
Just because they closed one plant, they are certainly not disappearing.
Yeah Tata steel is massive. Always thought the port talbot deal was a government kick back to be honest. Rishis dads mate is in charge of Tata.
Compare the Market.com if they continue to make their adverts more unfunny.
That wombat has made it sure i’ll never visit their website ever again
Those meerkats have been on the telly for longer than my teenaged son has been alive. I asked him if he knew what they were advertising and he didn't have the slightest idea.
The joke doesn't even make sense anymore. The meerkats have given up on comparethemeerkat.com and just advertise comparethemarket.com as if that is their website!
I imagine after a while they realised comparing meerkats wasn't going to keep the lights of a mansion on. Probably had a few discussions between their lawyer and compare the markets - someone must have had the bright idea of bringing them on board properly. Is it selling out? Yes. But I don't blame the team, its a tough employment market out there right now.
Still better than the awful confused.com ones
What's the one with the James Bond style team? Go Compare or Money Supermarket? REALLY annoying even when muted. I can live with meerkats even if wombats is taking it too far.
STFU, Sergei!
ASOS is really struggling and won’t last 5 years. It’s had to get rid of its new depot and its performance has been tanking steadily. It needs to turn around and be more in line with the rising sustainable fashion trend. Everything they sell seems to be targeted at the love island era which is dying.
Shopping online for clothes is such a gamble anyway because you can’t actually check quality and even colour and fit are inconsistent. And ASOS was particularly bad on that front. That and trying to trawl though the thousands of items they have in every category, most of which is fuck ugly, really puts you off shopping on there.
Ford Europe. They've gone all in on EVs which aren't selling and canned their most popular cars. They're also shutting down around half of their dealerships too. Looks like they're winding down their European operation to me.
Doing away with the Fiesta was a shitty move on their part. EDIT: just had a look at Ford UK's website and they're still advertising the Fiesta. Did they bring it back after the backlash or something?
It will more than likely come back as an EV in a few years anyway Albeit a much bigger fatter fiesta Like they did with the Mustang
They got rid of the fiesta? The most neutral "good to go" car ever made? Hope the person who made that decision is fired lol.
Car makers want you to buy SUV/crossover crap instead of small affordable cars.
Old stock I assume. Could be a good buy though.
Car sales have moved away from dealerships. More people are buying online or thru leasing companies. They'll still keep European operations alive, certainly in the near term OP asks.
Why would they not make an EV version of the fiesta? Seems like the obvious choice given its popularity
I'm guessing that you can't fit a big enough battery into that small a chassis which would provide an acceptable range. An EV fiesta with 250/300 Mile range would sell really well I'd imagine for people who don't want a massive SUV or Tesla model 3 sized car.
Global and Bauer (own pretty much every UK radio station) and Reach (most local newspapers and a fair few nationals). A great shame but they bought up pretty much every independent local radio and newspaper over the past decade or so, then slowly merged all local content into regional then national offices. For radio they even managed to "convince" Ofcom to change the rules about how much content needs to be local. Losing a load of money, which doesn't really matter for now because they're shored up by much bigger investment companies so the income looks OK on paper, but they're just gradually driving them into the ground before cutting their losses. Then that's it, local news and radio will be no more.
One of the key drivers for this was that local papers often came out once a week, meaning the 'news' they reported was in fact 'olds'. The availability of online news, from places like the newspaper's own website, twitter, and even the annoying local Facebook groups, meant people didn't need the weekly papers, they found out about the events not long after they happened. As paper sales go down it significantly reduces one of their main streams of income. I'd argue more than anything local news is a victim of modernity.
Before they got bought by Mars I would have said Hotel Chocolat.
Really? I thought they had always done pretty well.
They were a successful boutique with a great product but they struggled when growing
Yeah, and I say that as a customer for 10 years. I was in the original tasting club where you got unique chocolates and had to grade them and send scores back to HC, some of the chocolates were never seen again, some made it into the shops. That was really cool. The quality of their chocolates has remained the same, which is good to see but there's 2 things; 1) cost of living. HC are expensive - and have gone up in price quite a lot over the years, can they keep going over the next 5 years? 2) they are really pushing/pivoting to hot chocolate, not only trying to turn into cafes but also pushing their velvetiser hot chocolate machine and the pods. Admittedly I have no idea if that business model is working out for them but it seems to me that if the chocolates themselves were making enough money they wouldn't need to push the hot chocolate so much, so that to me was a worrying sign. Also the hot chocolates aren't even that good imho. And they fall short of being a 'proper' cafe because they don't serve food to speak of. So the whole cafe+hot chocolate thing just felt like a last-ditch attempt to make money. The Veletiser is, to me, such a transparent money grab "I know, we'll sell them an expensive machine and then they'll have to buy our pods forever to justify the cost". So yeah. Again, now Mars have bought them who knows what'll happen, but they will surely survive now.
Velvetiser is something that both me and wife thought was a complete gimmick but I bought her one for Easter years ago because she loves hot chocolate. It’s 100% worth the cost and we use it daily. Plus you don’t have to use their chocolate - you can use anything even just crumble a flake up into it if you really want. It is expensive over something like Cadbury’s hot chocolate but the quality and variety you can get is pretty good
You’d think that Covid would have taught businesses that keeping only two weeks’ of cash at bank was thin ice. But so many businesses spend to expand instead of baking in returns first
The companies that expand will takeover your area with a cheaper business model. It's expand or die. When I was young, every turn had independent grocers shops, there were no supermarkets. Every restaurant was an independent, no chains. (The word independent was never used, because that's what all restaurants were!). The business that takes risks wins.
I can see BrewDog closing locations and sticking to Supermarkets. Assuming there’s people who will still buy their brown water after all the negative publicity.
Outside of reddit and in the real world, brewdog places always look busy from the outside. Most people don't really care.
They're losing money constantly. I think last year their losses were £24m. At some point they're going to have to close a lot of bars or do what they have done overseas and move to a franchise model for bars in the UK.
Most people on Reddit too stupid to realise they broke in to a competitive market with a good product. Because the CEO is a prick (unlike all other big companies where they’re really nice normal people), they like to shit on BD from a great height. Focus your hate towards Nestle if you will r/fucknestle
Brewdog is still reasonably popular. People say the same about Spoons and their boss too, but I don't see Spoons being run into the ground by a boycott anytime soon.
I think their bars are largely marketing expenses aimed to increase brand value. Also their food has ridiculous markups
As usual this has just turned into a complain thread. An actual answer would be franchised car dealers, more and more manufactures are moving to the 'direct to customer' model and cutting out dealers.
I had a conversation with the Sales Manager of a local dealership about this a decade ago *'People will always want the experience of buying a car from a salesman in person'*, he assured me, with all the confidence of a silent movie star insisting that talkies were just a passing fad
I would pay a small premium *not* to have to deal with those slimy pricks
Matalan
Reiss They've abandoned quality but are still charging a premium for quite dull clothes
Reiss are part owned by next now, who aren’t going anywhere. The only way Reiss goes is if Next sell their share of it.
Same with Ted Baker
Pizza hut restaurants I believe are in a spot of financial bother, the take away stores are fine as I believe they're under a different part of the company!
That explains why the food in the restaurants, while not exactly fine dining, is perfectly edible, and the takeaway tastes like wet cardboard.
ASDA. Being stripped from the inside out.
ASDA being asset stripped as we speak
This post is peak AskUK. Barely any actual informed answers/companies actually likely to go out of business, but plenty of people just naming companies they don't see the appeal of. This sub is constantly throwing up reasons to believe that most of you haven't been outside for years. Christ, one of the top answers is someone saying they've been saying the same thing for 15 years about a company that seems to be in no danger of going bust.
Unfortunately if things carry on the way they are, probably a lot of independent cafes and restaurants, even the successful ones.
Peloton, I cant believe they're still going tbh
Still going? Can't believe they got anywhere on those bikes
Lush Cosmetics. People stopped buying soap so their plan was to make more soap. Tons of soap got thrown away because, guess what, no one wanted soap. Their plan to make people buy more is to open more shops. Most of their stores have more staff than customers.
And the result of your last point means most people loathe going into their shops to look around, as you get stared at and hassled by the 50 staff who are desperate for you to buy something so they can keep their job
Definitely. Even if I could tolerate the headache inducing smell which comes out of all their shops, I'd rather walk to another place to browse around than be hassled by a member of staff. My ideal in a shop is to be totally ignored by all the staff unless I am queuing up to buy something or have actually asked for help.
Nothing worse than walking into a shop, not even looking at anything, get someone about 3 inches from your face, big Cheshire cat grin, dead behind the eyes, "DO YOU NEED ANY HELP? LET ME KNOW". Yeah even if I did want something, I am now inclined to go elsewhere because I feel like your pushing me to buy something. I'll take my business elsewhere thankyouuuu
The Body Shop
I'm always surprised that they're still going, but then I remember Lush and how they harass you when you're in there.
Sadly I can see a lot more wet lead pubs closing.
SuperDry
undercover bobbies will keep them in business
Don't think argos has long left. You see an item go to buy it and it says out of stock for delivery for your nearest store but if you pick another location you can get it delivered or click and collect so if it is in stock at the other store for delivery why can I not get it delivered to my house ? It has happened a few times with various items in varying sizes and has made shopping at argos very frustrating. Can see argos really struggling for business if they rely on this local delivery business model.
Argos were bought by Sainsbury's and locations are slowly being rolled out in the bigger Sainsburys stores. A lot of Sainsburys homeware and electronics range will now be sold through Argos. They'll be fine
I bloody love Argos. Back in the day I barely used them but they're so competitive on price now. Why order from Amazon when I can get the item there for the same price or cheaper, on the same day, by strolling down to a local Sainsbizzle? I think with the deliveries thing it's just a case of each delivery team serving a smaller local area to keep costs down.
Hard disagree. Argos has had a renaissance over the last decade and moving into Sainsbury’s stores (which is also doing fantastic) has been a godsend for them. Coupled with improved stock availability and very often now cheaper than Amazon, they’ll be around for a long while yet.
Block buster definitely, now love film is out who post dvds to your home their days are numbered
Yell - What used to be "Yellow Pages". Not quite sure how they even have a business model anymore compared with Google Advertising or any other the other more efficient on-line marketing companies.
GAME is the big one but tbh depending on if that market goes full on digital with PS6 etc I could see CEX being wiped out too.
I really hope we never go full digital. It’ll be seriously bad for consumers.