Footwear retailer Clarks has drawn up plans for the permanent closure of some of its stores and drafted in bankers to review its finances.

It said that the leases for fewer than ten of its UK stores will not be renewed when they expire in May. The store locations have not yet been revealed.

Clarks says the decision is not related to the coronavirus pandemic, but is part of “business as usual” store reviews, and these stores would have closed anyway. The retailer has around 347 stores across the UK.

Patrick O’Brien, UK Retail Research Director at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on this news

“Clarks is in a typical midmarket squeeze: like M&S it is a heritage brand that has been too slow to adapt to a changing market – both in terms of product development (with the athleisure trend driving growth) and addressing the shift to online. Clarks had already brought in McKinsey to try to get it back on track, but with an excessive store estate, its core UK footwear market share plummeting and having fallen into the red, the management consultants had a huge job on their hands even before the virus hit.

“At the end of its FY2019, Clarks had 521 stores in the UK (including concessions), and while it began a portfolio review in 2017, it really should have started the process of eliminating stores much earlier, as the channel shift over the last decade has not come as a surprise. Progress has been at a snail’s pace – while it has shut some concessions it had the same number of full price stores in the UK at the end of FY2019 as it did at the end of FY2018. The truth is a lack of decisive action over the last five years has put another much loved British retailer in a weaker position than it should be to withstand the current crisis.”

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