Staff at Doddle in Queens Road learnt their jobs could be at risk after the parcel store was put up for let – with a warning to prospective tenants to “please note staff unaware”.
Doddle, which offers places online shoppers can have their parcels delivered to so they can be picked up at their convenience, has reportedly found trading difficult, with reports earlier this year that it is lost more than half a million pounds every week in 2017.
In April, it announced it was closing 17 stores across the country, with the Brighton store in Queens Road one of the few remaining, instead moving to open kiosks in existing stores such as Debenhams.
But Doddle said that although the Brighton store had not performed as well as it could, it hoped it could still turn things around and remain at the premises.
A spokeswoman said: “In common with any prudent retail business we have a duty to continually review the performance of each area of our business. As part of that process we constantly monitor each of our hundreds of locations to ensure they are effective contributors to our network.
“The volumes we have been achieving in our Brighton store have been lower than we would hope in the past few months and lower than in other areas of our network, so we are currently undertaking preliminary research into the value of the Brighton store.
“We know that this is a difficult time for the team in the store and are doing everything we can to support them in attracting new customers to join an already loyal customer base using the Queens Road store.
“We value each of our customers in Brighton and will be running regular Brighton-specific promotions in the run up to Christmas to make their online shopping experience easier and more rewarding and to encourage more shoppers to discover the Doddle experience here in Brighton.
“We are all hoping for a buoyant and busy run up to Christmas at this location. Our firm wish is to retain a presence near to the station in Brighton and to make a success of this store.”
“Our firm wish is to retain a presence near to the station in Brighton and to make a success of this store.”
So why put it up for rent then? YOu can’t get that much closer to Brighton station OR I would imagine a much smaller shop to cut costs.
Typical humbug from Doddle management. I hope the Doddle staff manage to find other jobs as I wouldn’t expect it to be around for too much longer.