A POPULAR city centre toy shop is running a 25% closing down sale as it prepares to close.
The Entertainer at the Moor Shopping Centre in Sheffield will shut its doors for the final time today, October 11.
The Entertainer in Sheffield will shut for good on Saturday[/caption]
The ‘everything must go’ sale has sen prices slashed on tonnes of items, except for gift cards, Lego, VTech and LeapFrog products.
One social media user expressed his disappointment at the decision by saying: “And another one gone.”
Andrew Murphy OBE, group chief executive officer at The Entertainer, said: “We are disappointed that we were unable to agree on commercially viable terms with our landlord at our Sheffield Moors store and particularly upset at the impact this has on our colleagues, who have run the store brilliantly.
“Sadly, it is a fact of retail life that shops sometimes have to close, as shopping patterns shift and cost growth outstrips sales increases.
“We remain committed to serving the people of Sheffield through our amazingly successful store at Meadowhall.”
Savers Health and Beauty Ltd have put in a planning application for the building, with designs for a new site on the building already drawn up.
The beloved toy store chain announced the closure of it’s Wrexham store last week.
The chain has also shut stores in Barrow-in-Furness, Croydon, Luton and Wandsworth so far this year.
The toy store announced a big change in its operations in September, to open on Sundays for the first time.
The Entertainer previously did not open on a Sunday due to the Christian beliefs of its founder, Gary Grant.
The change will run as a six month trial until Easter 2026 and is hoped to create 200 new jobs.
Husband and wife founders Gary and Catherine Grant handed the company’s ownership to its 1,900 employees in August.
They put the family business in the hands of an employee-run board, nearly 45 years after opening their first shop in Amersham, Buckinghamshire.
Despite the recent turbulence it remains the largest toy shop in the UK with 160 stores across the country.
High street agony
The UK toy market was up 8% in value in the year to June according to recent data.
But, that is just one positive sign in a grim market for high street retailers.
The high street has been struggling for the past decade, with the pandemic and cost-of-living crisis dealing fresh blows to a struggling industry.
34 chain retailers packed up in 2024, affecting over 50,000 employees, as online shopping continued to surge in popularity.
Internet sales have skyrocketed from 19.5% to 27.6% of all retail sales in 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics.
RETAIL PAIN IN 2025
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury’s hike to employer NICs will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
Research by the British Chambers of Commerce shows that more than half of companies plan to raise prices by early April.
A survey of more than 4,800 firms found that 55% expect prices to increase in the next three months, up from 39% in a similar poll conducted in the latter half of 2024.
Three-quarters of companies cited the cost of employing people as their primary financial pressure.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has also warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
It comes on the back of a tough 2024 when 13,000 shops closed their doors for good, already a 28% increase on the previous year.
Professor Joshua Bamfield, director of the CRR said: “The results for 2024 show that although the outcomes for store closures overall were not as poor as in either 2020 or 2022, they are still disconcerting, with worse set to come in 2025.”
Professor Bamfield has also warned of a bleak outlook for 2025, predicting that as many as 202,000 jobs could be lost in the sector.
“By increasing both the costs of running stores and the costs on each consumer’s household it is highly likely that we will see retail job losses eclipse the height of the pandemic in 2020.”
