Our high-street stalwarts don’t deserve to survive

With the news that another veteran retailer may be shutting its doors, Helen Coffey wonders whether any of the UK’s heritage chains can cling on amid the digital shopping storm

- Helen Coffey

Age is just a number. This line is usually trotted out by divorced men of a certain age by way of excusing their decision to date a 23-year-old. But these days it could just as easily apply to Britain’s beleaguered veteran high street chains – because, as it turns out, having a long and illustrious heritage that can be traced back hundreds of years means precisely nothing in the cutthroat world of modern shopping. Age really is just a number when it comes to retailers failing in the 21st century.

First came Woolworths (RIP). Although originally American, the brand was embraced by Brits after it crossed the pond in 1909, as familiar a staple in suburban shopping centres up and down the country as any of its homegrown peers. Woolies is where I used my birthday money to buy my first ever album on cassette; it’s where I would splurge pocket money reserves on eyewateringly expensive pick’n’mix, whose astronomical price only became apparent once it was weighed at the till (by which point it was too late to back out). Life without Woolworths was unthinkable and yet, in the blink of an eye, it was all too real. A hundred years after the first UK shop opened in Liverpool, all 807 branches closed up for good in 2009 following the financial crash.

Next on the chopping block was national treasure Wilkinson’s – officially shortened to “Wilko” from 2012 onwards – whose last remaining stores limped quietly offstage in October 2023. Founded as a single hardware shop in Leicester in 1930, it didn’t quite hit the century mark before a rapid tumble into administration led to its 400 branches being axed. Where will prospective students buy their spatulas and starter-kitchen kits from now? Where will I pick up cheap fence paint, gas safety lighters and a bewildering assortment of screwdrivers on a whim?