While Britain’s biggest commercial property supermarket Tesco has found life hard-hitting, with underlying sales tumbling, a handful of independent commercial property chains are flourishing, gradually taking over vacant commercial property shops on the high street, and winning over traditional commercial property supermarket shoppers.
A report shows cut-price commercial property shops are thriving as cash-strapped families look for bargains during the economic downturn.
According to The Grocer publication six of the top ten independent commercial property grocery chains in Britain are now cut-price commercial property stores and they are accountable for half of all turnover in the top 50, and two-thirds of all revenues.
The publication states independent commercial property grocery chains as those where the management or a family own more than half of the commercial property business, so this excludes all of the major supermarket chains.
Yet, what is evident is that the most successful are not off-license chains or delicatessens, but commercial property shops that mostly started out life selling stationary, discount toys, homewares and party equipment, not foodstuff or drink.
The biggest chain that tops the table is Wilkinson, with 366 commercial properties and an income of nearly £1.56bn. The cut-price store specialises in kitchen equipment, health and beauty products, DIY and garden furniture.
Two of the fastest risers are B&M and Poundworld, both of which are selling growing quantities of drink and food, attracting consumers on very tight budgets.
All of Poundworld’s products cost £1, and the shop, along with the other 99p discount shops, has convinced many food manufacturers to make special-sized packages to the fit the exact price point, from packs of bacon, sandwiches, a triple-pack of Kit Kats, bottles of fizzy drinks and 4 pints of milk.
B&M sells a wide range of tinned goods as well as breakfast cereals. Their growth reflects the increase of the big-cut price commercial property supermarkets such as Lidl and Aldi.
Records at the end of the year showed commercial property pound shops now outnumber book shops in Britain, as many took over the empty sites left by the downfall of Woolworths and other commercial property retail chains.
According to the Local Data Company, 487 town centres, in the year to the end of October, there was a 14.2 per cent rise in commercial property pound stores taking the total to 3,005. This is in contrast to the 2,705 commercial property book shops in the same area.
The boom is the exact opposite of the crisis facing the rest of the high-street, which is struggling to get by with the country’s fragile economy. According to the Local Data Company, in the worst-hit parts of Britain, more than one in five commercial property shops are boarded up.
According to the most recent figures, overall, around one in ten town and city centre commercial property shops across the UK are currently unoccupied.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported last week that spending is rising more slowly than inflation, meaning individuals are cutting back on buying.
The Prime Minister has appointed Mary Portas as his High Street’s tsar to try and salvage the country’s blighted town centres.
