High street shop to close for good after 40 years in just days as owner admits ‘I can’t hang on any longer’
A HIGH street shop will close down after 40 years within just a few days.
Family-owned Sims Footwear said it “can’t hang on any longer” as independent stores increasingly struggle to survive.
Paul Lamb, 62, said he will close his last store on April 19 – having outlived all of the other independent shoe retailers in his city.
Over the past two decades his brand has been dotted around Birmingham, but high street stores are finding it harder to cling on.
He also had an accessory shop in New Street Station and a shoe shop on Stephenson Street.
His last shop has been a staple of the Great Western Arcade in the city for the past 25 years, but now it is set to close down.
Paul cited declining footfall and increasing business rates as the reason behind the move.
He told BirminghamWorld: “It’s pointless trying to do what we’ve been doing, we just can’t hang on any longer.”
The 62-year-old said the decline of his business began way back in 2003.
Paul slammed the plight of struggling high street stores, saying “nobody is doing anything”.
He said everyone is “just watching it and hoping it will get better”.
“We’re a small fish in a big sea.”
One of his customers, William Asquith, was devastated to hear the news.
He called Sims Footwear an “awesome store” and remarked it is “another casualty of the tough times on the high street”.
The moves comes amid increasing pressure on independent stores on high streets.
According to the Centre for Retail Research, last year the UK lost 37 shops a day, with 13,500 closing for good in 2024 – a rise of 28 per cent on 2023.
This is expected to stay the same in 2025, with an estimated 17,350 closures and it they expect the vast majority – some 14,660 – to be independent retailers.
Since the Covid pandemic, the number of people splashing out in high street stores has declined, with more people switching to online shopping or cheaper brands instead.
This is a common theme quoted by owners shutting their shops for good.
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.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
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.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Carpetright, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Paperchase, Ted Baker, The Body Shop, Topshop and Wilko 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.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.