Topshop Closing Stores is a Good Thing

Closing shops tends not be something that is done voluntarily in the U.K., or anywhere else for that matter. It usually happens when things have come to such a pass, money is being hemorrhaged and creditors are closing in, that there is little choice left.

Yet this Monday, U.K. fashion outfit Topshop, which has outposts in cities across the U.S., decided that enough was enough and shuttered around half of its estate. Sound bad? Well, in the normal run of things, yes, but this was a strategic decision aimed at boosting sales.

What a watching world was in fact confronted with was a “reset,” as Topshop management dubbed it, a chance to put things in place for the holidays without the minor irritation that is occasionally known as customers.

The plan was to completely re-merchandise the stores as peak trading appears once more, there would not be any requirement to dance the light fantastic around the sales floor as customers tried, forgive them, to shop.

The biggest stores were exempt as trying to reset them would be a mammoth task and one that needs rather more than the few hours of closure than a standard Topshop required. That caveat notwithstanding, by Tuesday morning, a substantial proportion of the retailer’s estate looked not just refreshed, but different and ready for droves of Holiday shoppers. The remaining stores will undergo the same process next Monday, and then it’s time to trade.

Monday, as we all know, is a day of lower trading in retail, and so the impact on the week’s sales will not have been overly severe. Now Topshop has primed its stores and the question has to be, as others try to get things ready for the next two or three months, why is this not done elsewhere?    

John Ryan is a journalist covering the retail sector, a role he has fulfilled for more than a decade. As well as being the European Editor of VMSD magazine, he writes for a broad range of publications in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany with a focus on in-store marketing, display and layout, as well as the business of store architecture and design. In a previous life, he was a buyer for C&A, based in London and then Düsseldorf, Germany. He lives and works in London.