Why did Wilko's Fail...?

I really miss Wilko's, and so do many other people I've mentioned this too, it was the kind of place you could easily nip into any day of the week to get basic DIY stuff, gardening stuff, light bulbs and a range of other basic homewares.

I must have popped in at least once a month when it was still in business, it was my go-to for gardening stuff, cookware, paint and decorating stuff, pillows and bedding, all usually cheaper than many other places and often cheap but decent quality.

But it turns out I am unusual in the way I consume such not quite day-to-day items. I hate using the car for shopping and love walking and have, for the past decades I've been living in Britain, always lived withing walking distance of a Wilkos, and been able to get there as part of my weekly routine easily several days a week, which means it's been convenient for me to buy a relatively large amount of stuff from there easily on foot.

Wilko's suited my way of consuming. The problem is my way of consuming: in a high street, on foot, isn't usual anymore, and it's become less usual over time. And this is one of the many reasons Wilko collapsed, among others...

Reasons for the Wilko collapse...

The main reason seems to have been that pretty much all of its stores were in high streets with high rents but declining foot-fall. Wilko was simply paying too much to rent the space with less money being spent in those stores.

A linked reason was their failure to close their less profitable stores earlier. If they'd had done this and just focused on those stores which weren't declining as quickly, they may have survived, but that probably wouldn't have been enough...

They failed to shift larger products which took up a lot of space quickly enough... turns out the space they devoted to things such as furniture, maybe some of those larger garden items, were just sitting around taking up space rather than generating that much profit per whatever period. This is a fundamental failure to adapt, what they needed to do was sack-off those larger stores and focus on the smaller ones with the higher margin, higher turnover items.

And then there is the deeper reason, the increasing competition... from similar stores such as B and M, to snipers, such as Poundland and Supermarkets stocking home and cookware and bedding, models that work.

And with many of the above on the edges of towns or in retail parks with lower rents, and larger economies of scale, Wilko maybe didn't stand a chance.

And not to mention Amazon: pretty much anything you could buy in Wilko you can get online for cheaper and only 2 days wait. A final failure of Wilkos was that they never really managed to sync their online and in-store offerings.

Maybe it was nostalgia that kept Wilkos' going for too long.

I mean Wilko was basically Woolworths, it took over those stores, and it Woolie's failed it was always likely Wiko's was gonna fail too.

It's a shame, it's a bit of an inconvenience for me, but most of all I'm still a bit sad to see all those old and closed Wilko stores, but what can one do, other than move on?!?

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