Walter Holbrook

Not all dishevelment on the shop floor is equal. Sometimes mess is caused by carelessness, a lack of resources, or poor management. That’s worrying, especially if it’s pervasive, because it suggests a retailer hasn’t got a grip on basic operations. However, there’s also temporary disruption caused by making deliberate changes to deliver long term benefit. In an ideal world, this would be done outside of opening hours, but that’s not always possible.

Another day, another scare story about stores. This one comes from UBS which says retailers could close over 40,000 stores over the next five years. Before we go further, it’s worth saying that UBS has a poor track record with these predictions. In 2021, it said that 80,000 to 100,000 stores would close by 2026. However, that didn’t happen. Indeed, excluding non-store retailers, we entered 2026 with more stores than we had in 2021.