Who's for the chop?

[marksi]

The Victoria Square development in Belfast city centre created a huge amount of new retail units. The anchor tenant is House of Fraser. The Pier and Zavvi are in the centre and have gone to the wall. There is another unit downstairs, the name of which I can't remember, which has already closed. It would be a complete disaster if House of Fraser was to go.

Also in the centre is an Odeon cinema, which has a huge range of restaurants beside it. Nandos, McDonalds, Gourmet Burger, TGI Fridays, an italian, a chinese, Maggianos, Chilis, an american diner style one, and a few others. There is simply no way imo that they can all survive.

http://www.victoriasquare.com/

[TG]

As long as Chilis survives...that place was GOOD

[ashley b]

I was expecting ARK to go.

as in the car wash people? USC was a load of overpriced nonsense. Same stuff you got elsewhere for half as much.

No, (I presume) he means the that is a clothing chain in a similar style to USC, only much smaller (to be honest I've not seen one besides the one in Manchester, according to their website they have a whopping 10 stores).

[Dr Lobster*]

The practices of the lesser-spotted high street electrical shopper can be truly fascinating...people will walk into an electrical retailer and (somehow with a straight face) start enquiring "is there a discount for cash", "what deal is there for buying two?", (in regards to any attachment such as leads or installation charges etc) "you'll throw that in won't you?", "I bought <item A> here 2 months ago, so will you do <item B> any cheaper"...and not forgetting the kingpin one..."What's your best price on that?".

what is very annoying about dsg stores, is that quite often you'll find that the same 32" tv from their website is say £100 cheaper than in store and they won't budge on the price... i always ask for a better deal or something thrown in, if you don't ask you don't get.... usually they say no, but sometimes you'll get free delivery or something.

but on the subject of dsg, i purchased some laptop memory a while ago from the pc world website - using the collect @ store option it was basically 50% off the ticket price in store and when i went to the support counter with my ticket number the sales guy just walked around to the component section and picked me off a the boxes off the shelf - if you need something urgently it's certainly worth checking the pc world website and seeing if it's cheaper using the collect @ store option.

[Alexia]

Woolworths Newport still open I can report, and still surprisingly well stocked with AudioVisual, MP3 accessories, perishables and a toys.

All the JML TV sets have gone though.

[Whataday]

Which Newport is that? And which Woolworths is that? Proper Newport has/had 2 stores.. one was a Big W which opened to much fanfare but humiliatingly reduced in size by half to become a 'Woolworths Out of Town', sharing the space with TJ Hughes about a year after it opened. The other was their city centre branch which closed on Saturday I believe.

[James H]

USC does have some nice stuff, the unfortunate thing is it's virtually replicated everywhere else. That's the problem with fashion trends - once one starts, everywhere latches on so it's virtually impossible to distinguish between anything.

Besides, I have friends who work for USC so I do hope they find a buyer.

It puzzles me how some people didn't see the closure of Woolworths coming. Bad management together with a ridiculous move towards out of town centres, much of the merchandise being replicated elsewhere (usually stores like Asda and Tesco, meaning that even if they are higher priced your average shopper will kill two birds with one stone, proverbially) and the general quality of the merchandise sold being generally poor, the seeming confusion over what the shop really wanted to be, and the final death knell being the media's own "credit crunch" meant that Woolies was doomed from the late 1990s.

[Gavin Scott]

Olan Mills (a photographer concession who do baby portraits in motherecare stores) are on the list.

Not that I've ever heard of them. Their stores seemed to be in England & Wales.

Makes you wonder though. Who would cancel getting their baby's portrait taken? Its not really a thing you can push off 'til there's less uncertainty in the stock market. The older they get, the cuter they 'aint. Not buying a new car or having an expensive holiday is one thing - but are the public really so panicked that every purchase is reconsidered?

I'm making economies where I can - but I tend to do that anyway. I'm not afraid of losing my job, but even if I were I don't think I would deny myself anything and everything I consider to be a normal purchase.

Its no wonder the economy is in such dire straights.

[Sput]

Might that be more to do with people getting digital cameras and doing poor photoshop jobs to put their babies' heads on flowers, bees and other garden-themed bullshit?

[Ben]

Olan Mills (a photographer concession who do baby portraits in motherecare stores) are on the list.

Not that I've ever heard of them.

I have heard of them, but to be honest their logo made it look like Alan Mills (with a lower-case a).

[Gavin Scott]

Might that be more to do with people getting digital cameras and doing poor photoshop jobs to put their babies' heads on flowers, bees and other garden-themed bullshit?

People have had that ability for years - and some probably do both. Not having offspring I'm not sure how much I would want to memorialise their formative years, but I suspect quite a lot.

No - its probably a combination of Britain's late payment culture, suppliers going into liquidation and this crunch that's put them on the list of goners.