HIGH street card shop with 179 branches is closing another store and the exact date it will close has been revealed.
Clintons has approximately 179 branches across the country in cities such as London, Nottingham and Sheffield.
It sells everything from cards, gifts and party essentials like balloons.
But Bournemouth shoppers will soon have to find an alternative retailer as local reports say the chain is set to close its store in Castlepoint Shopping Center on August 11.
Shoppers shared their sadness at the decision to close the site online, with one writing “it’s a shame”.
Another on Google reviews described it as “brilliant”.
Another said: “Lovely cards and I always buy them for my family.”
While a third wrote: “Always get a beautiful card or cards at a reasonable price at Clinton. Wouldn’t go anywhere else. Staff always helpful.”
The Sun has contacted the Clintons for comment.
Clintons Cards announced last year that it was considering plans to close 38 of its stores in a bid to avoid insolvency.
Half a dozen stores have already closed, including in Cambridgeshire, Cumbria and Northamptonshire.
The retailer pulled down the shutters on its Castle Street, Hinckley, Leicestershire branch on February 17.
Its branch in Kettering’s Newlands Shopping Center closed on May 8.
Clintons will also close its Bexhill town center branch for good in August.
WHY ARE THE CLINTONS CLOSING BUSINESS?
Clintons is among the retailers hit by depressed high street performances and competition from online rivals.
In August 2023, restructuring experts FRP Advisory and law firm Jones Day presented plans to save the business in the insolvency court.
They came up with a deal to save thousands of jobs and over a hundred shops in the UK.
But it also included waving goodbye to a selection of stores that weren’t making enough money to sustain them.
This led to the closure of stores in Cumbria, Bolton and Leeds last year.
Clintons had originally planned a tie-up with another struggling stationary brand, Paperchase.
Unfortunately, the company went into administration at the beginning of last year.
At its peak, Clinton’s had 2,500 employees working in 335 stores.
Why do merchants close shop?
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many of Britain’s high streets and are often a symbol of city center decay.
The Sun’s business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are closing their doors.
In many cases, retailers are closing stores because they are no longer the money makers they once were due to the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising employee costs have made it even more expensive for stores to stay open. In some cases, retailers close shop and reopen a new store at the other end of the high street to reflect how the city has changed.
The problem is that when a big store closes, footfalls fall across the local high street, putting more stores at risk of closure.
Retail parks are becoming increasingly popular with shoppers looking for easy and free parking at a time when local authorities have increased parking charges in cities.
Many retailers, including Next and Marks & Spencer, are closing high street stores and instead taking larger stores to more efficient retail parks.
Boss Stuart Machin recently said that when he moved a tired store in Chesterfield to a large new store in a retail park half a mile away, his sales in the area increased by 103 per cent.
In some cases, stores were closed when the retailer went bust, as with Wilko, Debenhams Topshop, Dorothy Perkins and Paperchase to name but a few.
Increasingly, when a chain goes out of business, a rival retailer or private equity firm acquires the intellectual property rights to own the brand and sell it online.
They may continue to open multiple stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely that many stores or in the same locations.