Cabot Crunch

Just one week after the Post greeted the opening of Carboot Circus with the most ridiculous and uncritical hype they are today reporting the first closure of one of the luxury stores as the economic crisis begins to bite the retail sector.

A luxury clothes shop which opened its doors at Bristol’s new Cabot Circus shopping centre just a week ago is set to close within days.

Hardy Amies, the upmarket tailor which once made dresses for the Queen, was yesterday appointing administrators to seek a new owner after running into financial difficulties.

It opened a new store – its sixth in the UK – in Quakers Friars last week, which employs six staff. Its ranges for men include ties at £55 each, and jeans which cost £145 a pair.

The company had to suspend trading in its shares a week ago, on the day after its Cabot Circus store opened. In a statement, the company said it had since been approached by various parties interested in helping solve its funding difficulties but had been “unable to finalise an offer that would secure the future of the company.”

Perhaps the Post will live to regret last week’s moment of madness, devoting so much space to praising the cathedral of consumerism at a time when many Bristolians face serious economic hardship.

Maybe they will come to regret comments like this from September 25th,

It’s remarkable how a development like Cabot Circus can still provoke the ‘glass half empty’ mentality in some people.

Read discussions on the internet, scan our letters pages, in fact any public forum discussing Bristol issues, and there will be small numbers of very vocal people telling us all why CabotCircus won’t work and why we shouldn’t shop at Harvey Nichols.
There’s a simple answer to these people – don’t go.
For the rest of us, Cabot Circus is a fantastic opportunity, a symbol of economic growth at a time when the country is in financial turmoil.

The people who have a decent employment future and good job prospects will hardly be thinking the new centre is a bad idea. Why put a dent in their aspirations?

Some of the upmarket stores may be beyond the reach of many people, but they bring a glamour which the city has never had. If that fails, just chuckle and accept them – it’s not your money.

Or, perhaps they will just continue uncritically regurgitating corporate PR, pushing manufactured hype and refusing to join the dots. At crisis times like these the ruling class come to rely ever more heavily on their corporate media machine to promote their sinking system, and the Post is doing a pretty good job of that right now.

Bread and circuses . . .

Invested interests

More great news about Carboot Circus from the Post today: it’s “WOW”, again.

This time the adulation comes courtesy of the Property Matters column (left) on the Post’s business page. So, we get,

“This moment will be remembered . . . ‘WOW’ what a world-class shopping centre the Bristol Alliance have built for us . . . architectural masterpiece, on time and on budget . . . strong sense of pride . . . fantastic selection of stores . . . John Cabot set sail from the city and discovered Newfoundland, but there is no need for Bristolians to leave the city now. We have it all right here.”

We have to admit that in the past we have tended to skip the Post’s business coverage assuming it to be little more than regurgitated press releases from the Post’s corporate chums. And, well it seems we were right.

Who is this Post columnist with such praise for Carboot Circus and the Bristol Alliance? He’s Chris Thomas, a Partner with the Bristol based commercial property consultants Hartnell Taylor Cook. They also happen to be consultants and agents to Carboot Circus/Bristol Alliance.

Here’s a bit more from Chris Thomas from the Post on August 16 2006 in a column headlined “Support City Centre Stores”,

The Broadmead expansion is progressing at a dramatic pace in front of our eyes and there is a huge “feel good” factor associated with Bristol, this landmark development and the exciting tenants already committed to it. .
However, it is vitally important to support the existing retailers in this time of transition.

On a macro scale it is good to see Marks & Spencer has improved its trading performance. The Broadmead store is undergoing a refurbishment which, once completed, will provide an exciting and attractive store. Other retailers also bucking the trend and continuing to expand include Primark, New Look and Arcadia.
Primark, which acquired the Littlewoods stores nationally last year, continues to trade excellently. In 2008, when House of Fraser relocates to its new store, Primark, which purchased the building last year, will open a new 150,000 sq ft flagship store for the region.

It is not all doom and gloom in the centre, there is still considerable retail activity, as illustrated in The Mall Galleries, where several new lettings are due to be announced in the next 10 days.
It is an exciting time for Bristol from a retail perspective but in this time of transition and difficult trading conditions while the new centre is under construction, I urge you to support Broadmead, The Mall Galleries and the city centre.

So, why is Chris promoting Carboot Circus’s competitors, the Galleries, Primark and M&S? Oh yeah, because they are all clients of Hartnell Taylor Cook as well.

Proper journalism, right?

And, for good measure Hartnell Taylor Cook were winners of the ‘retail agency’ category of the inaugural Evening Post Commercial Property Awards in 2006. And John Taylor of Hartnell Taylor Cook won the lifetime achievement award in the same awards last year.

And because this wouldn’t be a Bristol business-media-property web otherwise; the former senior partner of Hartnell’s, St John Hartnell, was, of course, a Merchant Venturer.

What a mucky business.