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Business News HMV Timeline Retail
HMV store closures begin
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 1 February 2011
HMV’s downsizing of its store network is already underway, with nine HMV shops closed for the final time on Sunday. As previously reported, the entertainment retailer confirmed it will close 40 HMV shops, and 20 stores in its Waterstones chain, by the end of 2011 following disappointing sales figures ahead of last Christmas.
Most of the nine shops that closed this weekend are in relatively close proximity to another HMV store. The branches so far affected were in Birmingham (Pallasades Centre), Brighton (Western Road), Croydon (North End), Ealing, Glasgow (Sauchiehall Street), Liverpool (Bold Street), Nottingham (Wheelergate), Oldham and Plymouth (New George Street).
A spokesman told Music Week: “We’ve begun the process of reviewing our store portfolio, with the main focus right now being locations where we have more than one store trading in close proximity to each other, which means we are broadly catering to the same public. The stores we’ve just closed are pretty much secondary sites, leaving much larger superstores in place to ensure that we maintain our specialist offer in these locations. We’re currently in consultation with affected work colleagues, who we’re doing our best to redeploy to nearby stores where we can”.
