A HIGH street card store with 179 branches is closing another store and the exact date it will close has been revealed.
Clintons has approximately 179 branches across the country in cities such as London, Nottingham and Sheffield.
It sells everything from cards, gifts and party supplies like balloons.
But Bournemouth shoppers will soon have to look for an alternative retailer as the chain is set to close its store in the Castlepoint shopping center on August 11, according to local news reports.
Shoppers have shared their sadness at the decision to close the site online, with one writing “it’s a shame”.
Another wrote in the Google reviews that it was “brilliant”.
Another said: “Beautiful cards and I always buy them for my family.”
While a third wrote: “Always buy a nice, reasonably priced card or cards from Clinton. Wouldn’t go anywhere else. Staff are always helpful.”
The Sun has approached the Clintons for comment.
Clintons Cards announced last year that it was considering plans to close 38 of its stores to avoid insolvency.
Half a dozen stores have already closed, including in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria and Northamptonshire.
The retailer pulled down the shutters on its branch in Castle Street, Hinckley, Leicestershire, on February 17.
The branch at Newlands Shopping Center in Kettering will be closed on May 8.
Clintons will also permanently close a branch in Bexhill town center in August.
WHY IS CLINTONS CLOSING STORES?
Clintons is one of several retailers hit by low footfall on the high street and competition from online rivals.
In August 2023, restructuring experts FRP Advisory and law firm Jones Day presented plans to rescue the company in an insolvency court.
They came up with a deal to save thousands of jobs and more than a hundred British stores.
But it also meant saying goodbye to some stores that weren’t making enough money to keep.
This led to the closure of stores in Cumbria, Bolton and Leeds last year.
Clintons originally planned to merge with another struggling stationary brand Paperchase.
Unfortunately, the company went bankrupt early last year.
At its peak, Clinton’s had 2,500 employees in 335 stores.
Why are retailers closing their stores?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of the decline of a city centre.
Ashley Armstrong, business editor of The Sun, explains why so many retailers are closing their doors.
In many cases, retailers are closing their stores because the rise of online shopping means they are no longer the moneymakers they once were.
Falling store sales and rising personnel costs have made it even more expensive for stores to stay open. In some cases, retailers are closing a store and reopening a new one on the other side of a high street to reflect how a city has changed.
The problem is that when a major store closes, it brings a surge of foot traffic to the local high street, putting more stores at risk of closing.
Retail parks are becoming increasingly popular with shoppers who want easy and free parking at a time when municipalities have increased parking rates in cities.
Many retailers, including Next and Marks & Spencer, have closed their high street stores and instead housed larger stores in better-performing retail parks.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when it moved an outdated store in Chesterfield to a new large store in a retail park half a mile away, sales in the area increased by 103 percent.
In some cases, stores are closed when a retailer goes bankrupt, as in the case of Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase, to name a few.
What’s becoming increasingly common is that when a chain goes bankrupt, a rival retailer or private equity firm takes over the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely that many stores or in the same places.