Topshop and Topman manager job cuts expected soon

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Jan 29, 2018

Hundreds of Topshop and Topman stores could see imminent staff cuts as the Arcadia-owned chain becomes the latest UK retail business seeking to rationalise its stores strategy in the face of lower footfall and the migration to e-tail.

Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s have also announced job cuts this month with management looking like it could bear the brunt of the cuts in many businesses. Now it seems Arcadia is thinking that way too. 

Where it operates combined Topshop and Topman stores it currently has a separate manager for each. But in the future, it plans to have just one overall store manager covering both brands, according to reports.

And it’s been reported that separate Topshop and Topman stores that are in close proximity to each other will also be overseen by a single manager.

Arcadia currently has 300 Topshop and 250 Topman stores and with the managers in those sites being the highest paid in-store staff, it could potentially make some major cost savings from the move.

That’s important as the parent company has faced increasingly challenging times along with the rest of UK retail in the past few years and the once-unstoppable Topshop hasn’t emerged unscathed, whether in its domestic market or abroad.

It has closed some stores in international, with the failure of its Australian and Spanish businesses being the most high profile casualties. But it is also opening stores with a deal recently announced to grow in China and the company also taking space at major retail developments in the UK.

Yet it still faces the issue of growing online sales that are diverting trade away from its stores, even though click-and-collect remains a footfall booster and it’s a major player in fashion e-tail.

That means it needs to find a cost-effective model for its physical stores that works for it long-term. 

A number of fashion chains are looking at their store portfolios with staff cuts, requests for rent reductions and even store closures on the agenda. Shoppers who do venture in-store increasingly do so at retail parks and at bigger shopping malls rather than high streets and smaller shopping centres where many stores are located.