Fans of Poundland will know all too well that it’s hardly even Poundland anymore. Gone are the days when you knew exactly how much everything costs – you’ve got to check the labels these days to make sure you’re not being charged a fiver. Despite that, there is still one thing you can get for just a quid: the shop itself.
That’s not a joke. The entirety of Poundland was sold by its owners Pepco to a US investment company called Gordon Brothers (who used to own Laura Ashley) for a ‘nominal fee’ of a single pound. A huge restructuring is expected, with at least some of the 825 Poundland stores across the country expected to close. Experts predict that at least 100 locations will go.
The company currently employs over 16,000 people, many of whom could lose their jobs if shops begin to shut down. This sale doesn’t come as a huge shock, as the company has been struggling from low profits for the past year. The low cost, as funny as it is, is not quite the deal that it appears at face value – it could cost the new owners up to £100 million to get the brand back on its feet.
Pepco maintains that this does not mean that it’s the end of Poundland, stating that it ‘remains a key player in UK discount retail, with millions of customers annually and a well-loved brand and proposition’, and adding that this is simply a move to ‘[simplify] the group and [focus] on our successful Pepco business.’
An expert consumer analyst, Kate Hardcastle, told the BBC that part of the decline in Poundland’s sales could be down to low-cost online retailers undercutting the prices in Poundland and its competitors; ‘Against that backdrop, the once-simple promise of a 'pound shop' no longer carries the same weight or differentiation.’
We don’t have any information as of right now about which, if any, Poundland stores will end up pulling down the shutters one final time, but we’ll keep an eye out for any more information as it comes. In fact, we have a complete list of every high-street chain that’s closing stores this year – you can find that here.
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