WH Smith PLC, trading as WHSmith, is a British retailer, with headquarters in Swindon, England, which operates a chain of high street, railway station, airport, port, hospital and motorway service station shops selling books, stationery, magazines, newspapers, entertainment products and confectionery.
Virgin Megastores is an international entertainment retailing chain, founded in early 1976 by Richard Branson as a record shop on London's Oxford Street.
A chain store or retail chain is a retail outlet in which several locations share a brand, central management and standardized business practices. They have come to dominate many retail markets, dining markets, and service categories in many parts of the world. A franchise retail establishment is one form of a chain store. In 2005, the world's largest retail chain, Walmart, became the world's largest corporation based on gross sales.
Toys "R" Us is an American toy, clothing, and baby product retailer owned by Tru Kids and various others. The company was founded in 1948; its first store was built in April 1948, with its headquarters located in Parsippany-Troy Hills, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area.
Hamleys of London Limited, trading as Hamleys, is a British multinational toy retailer, owned by Reliance Retail. Listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's oldest toy store, it was founded by William Hamley as "Noah's Ark" in High Holborn, London, in 1760. It moved to its current site on Regent Street in London's West End in 1881. This flagship store is set over seven floors, with more than 50,000 lines of toys on sale. It receives around five million visitors each year.
Woolworths was a British high-street retail chain. At its height, it operated as Woolworths Group PLC, which included other companies such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK, and book and resource distributor Bertram Books.
British Home Stores, commonly abbreviated to BHS and latterly legally styled BHS Ltd, was a British department store chain, primarily selling clothing and household items. In its later years, the company began to expand into furniture, electronics, entertainment, convenience groceries and fragrance and beauty products.
HMV is a British music and entertainment retailer, founded in 1921. The brand is owned by JD Sports and operated by Sunrise Records, except in Japan, where it is owned and operated by Lawson.
Allders was an independent department store operating in the United Kingdom.
Arcadia Group Ltd was a British multinational retailing company headquartered in London, England. It was best known for being the previous parent company of British Home Stores (BHS), Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Debenhams, Evans, Miss Selfridge, Topman, Topshop, Wallis and Warehouse. At its peak, the group had more than 2,500 outlets in the UK and concessions in UK department stores and several hundred franchises operated internationally.
Birthdays was a British High Street greeting cards retailer. From its beginning in 1966, Ron Wood Greeting Cards operated as a wholesaler of greeting cards and gift wrap in Bury, Greater Manchester. In the mid-1970s three card shops were opened and soon the number had increased to thirty. In 1986 the Birthdays concept was launched, and the product range gradually diversified to include novelties, soft toys and ornaments. Birthdays operated for over 40 years under various names.
Edcon Limited was a retail company based in Johannesburg, South Africa. Its subsidiaries included Edgars, a department store with 203 branches. In 2020, the Competition Tribunal approved the sale of the Edgars division to Retailability (pty) Ltd, and Jet to The Foschini Group.
Borders (UK) Ltd., also known as Borders & Books etc., was established as a Borders Group subsidiary in 1998, and in 2007 became independent of the US parent company. At its peak after separation from the US parent, it traded from its 41 Borders and 28 BOOKS etc. shops with over one million square feet of retail space, taking around 8% of the retail bookselling market. In 2008 and 2009 the store numbers were reduced before the collapse of the chain. They also operated one single branch in Ireland, but closed this early in 2009. On 26 November 2009 it was announced that Borders (UK) had gone into administration. All stores closed on 24 December 2009.
Modelzone is a scale model brand, owned by British retailer WHSmith, of which scale models and related products are sold in WHSmith stores and online.
Barratts was a brand of high street shoe shops operating in the UK and Ireland. The Barratts shoes brand traded from 100 UK and Ireland stores.
Retail apocalypse refers to the closing of numerous brick-and-mortar retail stores, especially those of large chains, beginning around 2010 and accelerating due to the mandatory closures during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tru Kids, Inc. is an American retail and licensing company that operates the Toys "R" Us locations in the United States. Although they only operate locations in the United States, they own the Toys R Us brand internationally. It was established on January 20, 2019 after its lenders cancelled the bankruptcy auction and took over the Toys "R" Us intellectual property in October 2018.
The COVID-19 pandemic has taken a sharp economic toll on the retail industry worldwide as many retailers and shopping centers were forced to shut down for months due to mandated stay-at-home orders. As a result of these closures, online retailers received a major boost in sales as customers looked for alternative ways to shop and the effects of the retail apocalypse were exacerbated. A number of notable retailers filed for bankruptcy including Ascena Retail Group, Debenhams, Arcadia Group, Brooks Brothers, GNC, J. C. Penney, Lord & Taylor and Neiman Marcus.
