A final wander round Woolies
THE January sales are unique this year. There are bargains at the shops – and the shops are bargains, too,
writes Martin Freeman
.
If you've got some spare cash left over from Christmas you can buy a whole retail chain.
There's no need to hurry. You're too late to snap up Woolworths but if the doom merchants are correct up to 15 High Street names will have checked out forever by mid-February as the shopping slowdown becomes a retail standstill.
Furniture chain MFI, home entertainment shop Zavvi, tea and coffee specialists Whittard of Chelsea and menswear retailer The Officers Club all collapsed in the weeks before Christmas – although Whittard and The Officers Club were sold on. Childrenswear store Adams is going into administration.
Retail analysts said the wonder of Woolworths was that the outmoded chain had lasted so long. The sell-a-lot format was done better by supermarkets who sold a lot more, and cheaper, the experts argued.
But in Plymouth the closure is still a shock.
The store will leave a big gap, both in the minds of generations of loyal Plymothians and, physically, in New George Street. Depending on who you listened to, Plymouth's Woolworths was either the biggest in the country or the busiest.
I'd put my loose change on the latter being true, but only because the store was so big it fronted on to parallel streets. People used Woolies as a short cut between Cornwall Street and New George Street.
A stroll into Woolies today is like stepping into a desolate department store in China before the communist leaders embraced capitalism and set about filling Western shops with cheap Chinese-made goods.
Most of the shelves are bare and the racks deserted, a temporary monument to the collapse of Britain's shopping-led economic boom.
We've seen the 'everything must go' sale signs many times before, but now they mean what they say.
The shelves off the walls, the racks for the clothes, the store safe, the staff's chairs – all are priced up and ready to go before the Plymouth shop closes on Friday .
You can even buy the sale signs: £1 for a huge pack of large Price Drop labels.
At least one member of staff was taking the pledge to sell everything to extremes. "How much will you pay for a photo of me for the paper?" the sales assistant asked me, privately, after a store boss turned away The Herald's photographer. I
think
he was joking.
Customer Freda Treacy wasn't laughing, though. The 70-year-old from Saltash was making her final trip to a store where she had shopped most of her life.
"I find it very sad," she said. "They used to sell a bit of everything, didn't they?"
She'd bought nothing, tempted, I suppose, by bargains elsewhere.
So was I. Through a Woolies window I spotted a special offer on an LCD TV in an electrical shop opposite.
I went for a look and found the bargain model was out of stock. I felt pleased not disappointed, partly because I wondered whether I should risk spending on a big-ticket item (is my job safe? Is anybody's?) but also because the sales will be year-round in 2009.
Prices will have to drop further to get nervous customers like me to part with their money, leading to further shop closures – and even bigger bargains.
Back to Woolies, then, for a souvenir bargain, a grim memento of the end of the great shopping boom.
On my way in, I met happy shoppers coming out.
Beverley Forte, aged 45, had answered the SOS – save our shops – call and taken the trip from Teignmouth to trawl Plymouth's sales.
She'd stocked up on some cut-price birthday cards. "There wasn't much else left," she said.
Michael White of Beacon Park, Plymouth, had his eyes on brighter and warmer times ahead, if not for the economy. "My wife's in there buying an electrical fan – they're practically giving them away," the 57-year-old said.
In through Woolies doors for the final time, I had the urge to splurge.
But on what?
I felt the need for something appropriate. If they'd had I Bought This In The Woolies Closing Down Sale T-shirts, I'd had have grabbed one.
How about classic Woolies black canvas pumps with the elastic sides and the ribbed rubber soles, worn by generations of children in school gyms?
Only the fastening, now Velcro, has changed over the years – even the full price, £2, is as cheap as a generation ago; thanks to China again.
They were down to 80p but still not worth it at Woolies – my children would get teased by classmates for not wearing a brand name.
In the end I settled on 160-sheet pads of ruled paper, down from £2.50 for the pair to 64p each.
I thought they'd be ideal for my kids' homework.
First lesson: "Don't spend money you haven't got."
Comments