Andrew J wrote:I'm not sure that's totally correct as the large unit on the one side was A & F brand Gilly Hicks for many years until the company closed all its stores. By all accounts the Cardiff branch had been performing well. True the unit on the other side has never been occupied but it was reconfigured several years ago and let to Byron Burger before their CVA which resulted in the conpany scaling back and no opening in Cardiff
It was Gilly Hicks (lingerie) for a couple of years. But it took quite a while to let (the store only opened in late 2011), and its proven stubborn to relet since Gilly Hicks shut down in Q1 2014: over 4 1/2 years ago!
And I'm not sure John Lewis has "by all accounts" performing well. J Lewis's weekly sales figures never said what the actual sales were but they ranked them according to absolute (cash terms) change in sales. Even if posting a fairly healthy percentage increase, Cardiff would sit a fair way down the rankings. The fact its absolute sales increases weren't that big for pretty big % increases means its overall absolute sales weren't that high. In fact, I remember working out it was turning over less than stores in places like High Wycombe and Cambridge: significantly smaller stores and significantly smaller retail centres.
They stopped producing store-by-store figures as that also meant separating on- and off-line sales. And stores were getting upset about that given that a hefty proportion of sales actually made online were either collected in store or based on first going in store.