Wick will soon be a ghost town

More Wick shops to close shortly...

DE Shoes
Barrats Beads & Crafts
The Sports shop
The event/toy shop
Made in Caithness

Is no-one shopping locally anymore or is the high street just not interesting enough these days??

I don't buy shoes often, but use DE when I do buy. I have no need to buy sports wear, or toys, and I make a lot of the things I could have bought in the Made in Caithness shop. I internet shop for fabrics, as it's a much cheaper option for me.

shame shops are closing down ,but i for one cant find what i want in wick so i shop on line

I noticed that too. We used to shop in Wick but now...we just go to Tesco and we don't stop in the centre anymore. Sad.

I am sorry to see shops go but lets be honest it's about the shopping experience. If shops are hidden away, not pleasant placve to shop in, staff do not care, not actually selling what people want at a price they are willing to pay then this is the result. Of course people like to park their cars next to the shop door.

What do you mean "..soon.."? It is a ghost town already

It happening all over,not just in Wick,Internet shopping is sometimes cheaper and easier,plus you don't have the annoyance of having to deal with some of the terrible customer service there us in this county....sad....but true in a lot of shops :( x

It is sad that is true. But it's a sign of the times, like religion, they don't move with the times. Natural selection.
We all feed it so we can't complain about it!

Angel...

barrets beads and craft was to dear , and made in caithness made a mistake when they moved to the new shop as people do not go down that far , well i do not very often

Apparently theres another closing in the high street soon, the little clothes shop next to the cafe? mates wife mentioned it earlier today. Thought the lass was doing well in there too

and graham beggs had gone as well

Popped into Birons today after trying the craft shops(thought glue sticks were more craft than ironmongery but was wrong) for hot gluegun sticks and got them no bother!
And they have good customer service..if not in stock they will order stuff in for you!
But oilcloth in patterns I like is proving more troublesome to find locally.....that will be an online buy by the look of things.
Had a wee browse round the centre of the town too...but cant really remember the last time I had the time to just browse.
Useually its a quick grab/trolley dash ..pay as quick as possible and run to pick up /drop off kids type of shop.....

Wick is not the only small community that is suffering. Even in the Beeg city of Edinburgh this syndrom is occurring, places such as Leith, there are small old established shops closing on a weekly basis, Leith is wedged between an Asda to the west and a Tesco to the east. Many other communities in Auld Reekie are suffering, Portobello, Granton, Gorgie to name a few. Wee shops cannot compete with the shopping parks such as Kinnaird Park to the east, Straiton to the south and the Gyle to the west, these places are killing our wee communities.

Quote:

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But these steps don't go far enough, some experts say, in light of a forecast last month that 90 percent of retail sales growth in Britain, France and Germany between 2012 and 2016, or 91.5 billion euros, is expected to be online, according to the property arm of French insurer AXA , which manages 43 billion euros of assets.


As well as changing what's inside, mall owners will need to borrow ideas from developing markets like Dubai and China where centres are part of wider mixed-use developments where people live or include open spaces where they spend leisure time, Roberts said.


"Convenience and Internet shopping has created a breakdown in community structures and there's a gap there waiting to be filled," he said.

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from yahoo

if wick becomes a ghost town WHO YOU GOING TO CALL THE GHOST BUSTERS

Lets face it Wick town centre is a hole and has been since Wick began.

Wick seemed to be picking up with some smart shops & now it seems to be going down again, Of course we will have a lovely shiney new council building [at a snip, was it £80 mil] [ & looks like a sixties throwback ]

I would not say Wick would be a ghost town however it will have to change and move with the times.

As time is moving on everything is changing everything is being conducted on a different level from years ago. The way we work, rest and play has all changed and will continue to change.

The latest run of shops closing will continue, I have said and will say again by the time the council offices come back to the town centre it will not be anywhere near the same hub it was when they left.

The great charrette may be heralded a success or not by whatever standards you wish to apply but what has it achieved in the short term for the local businesses............nothing. Indeed if I were a local hotelier, shopkeeper or restaurant owner I would be very anxious about the proposals from the charrette.

http://www.highland.gov.uk/NR/rdonly...sheetLores.pdf

Take a look for yourself at the proposals ( I know these are all just proposals as in a nice dream )..... a new restaurant right across from the french restaurant. A new hotel on the water front when the Norseman is already in the middle of redeveloping and modernising its hotel. A new shopping area linking to the High Street which by this time will be devoid of everything excepts pubs to drown your sorrows over where it all went wrong and how it used to be oh and of course the all new council offices in the middle of the now deathly quiet town centre. Its all looking good on paper but there needs to be some small basic steps first!

Tesco and all the other major retail outlets are not the main reason that town centres are in decline. Its the changing shopping habits of the public that are. We are lazier, we like to park at the door, we are more demanding, we know what we want and we wont accept anything less. Grasping this and redeveloping accordingly is one way to proceed and if that means raising your game rooting the shops from the town centre out beside the larger stores ( Caithness Glass would make a smashing indoor local shops outlet ) to capture the market and redeveloping the town centre in a different direction then that may be the only way forward. :D


< Ducking now for incoming emails ;) >

The great charrette : great ideas, but thats all they are : look closer...a lot of things suggested needs public funding, which are scarce : in a weak local economy private sector wont invest, but who would use the facilities suggested anyway ? Shop closures hits jobs, shop closed, jobs close : factor in UKAEA run down with first large scale lay offs planned for c 2017 /18 ( 5 years away ) and what will Wick be like then ? Oh Ive just woken up, Wick will be a renewables hub.....don't fall for that, renewables related activities are cloaked in smoke and mirrors, Wick may get a few support jobs in assembly / transporting wind turbines but not a lot : the infrastructure for making turbines / assembly etc is already at Nigg : Wick will get scraps. As for the Pentland Firth developments : dont look for anything until mid 2014, and then any work will be largely Scrabster based. Im afraid I only see a very,very bleak future for Wick.

Also seeing as how Im either on a downer or seeing the world as it is, I may add the following to the tale of woe

1 Complete demise of fishing / fishing infrastructure and related jobs
2 Loss of Civil Service based Jobs caused by merging departments etc
3 On going job cuts in public sector services

I wonder who will be partaking of the services in the great charrette ? Or is the point to create a tourism attraction ? Live of the tourist pound ?