A HIGH street fashion chain has immediately shut the doors at 23 stores after tumbling into insolvency last night.
Quiz Clothing has shuttered nearly two dozen stores this morning, with closures affecting locations in Glasgow, Bristol, Liverpool, and Peterborough.
The company, renowned for its party wear, has struggled in recent years and, as of last night, appointed insolvency practitioner Teneo to manage its collapse.
This decision has resulted in the immediate closure of 23 stores, with 191 staff made redundant.
Gavin Maher, joint administrator at Teneo, said: "Although the sale has resulted in the transfer of a number of jobs, it has been necessary to
make redundancies.
"We appreciate that this is a difficult and uncertain time for all involved and are communicating appropriately with all employees, customers and stakeholders."
Despite the closures and job losses, the Quiz brand and 42 other stores have been bought out of administration by Orion Retail, a company under the control of the Ramzan family, the original founders of Quiz.
Quiz's online operations, concessions, and international branches are unaffected as they are run by separate entities.
At the time of its collapse, Quiz employed approximately 722 people across its 65 standalone stores and numerous concessions.
Sheraz Ramzan, chief executive of Quiz said yesterday: "The Board took the difficult decision to appoint administrators to Zandra Retail Limited in light of the continuing challenging trading conditions impacting the Group's performance.
"We are deeply sorry to those affected by the store closures, including our retail colleagues.
"However, this decision will put the business in a more sustainable footing for the future and protect several hundred jobs as a result."
HERE is the full list of shops which have now shut their doors:
The retailer has faced difficulties for some time.
Its precarious position worsened in December when reports emerged that its lender, HSBC, had engaged restructuring experts, signalling a potential crisis for the fashion chain.
The retailer, best known for its women's party fashion ranges, warned at the start of December that a "significant reduction in revenues" could lead it to run out of cash in the new year.
The business has already gone through one restructuring in 2020 after going in to administration and renegotiated its rents as lock downs damaged retailers.
Since the beginning of December 2024, Quiz Clothing's value has plummeted by 50%.
Shortly before delisting from the stock market in a cost-saving measure, its market capitalisation had dwindled to a mere £3.6million.
Quiz Clothing, Teneo and Interpath have all been contacted for comment.
Quiz's difficulties reflect a broader crisis engulfing the UK retail sector.
Several other prominent retailers are also facing challenges, including Poundland's parent company which is exploring strategic options with advisers.
Lakeland has been put up for sale, and The Original Factory Shop nearing a sale to Baaj Capital.
Last month, WHSmith revealed it is looking to sell all 500 high street stores.
The retail group has been in negotiations with several prospective buyers of the high street division for several weeks.
The Sun revealed yesterday that advisers working for WHSmith have been in discussions with Doug Putman, the Canadian entrepreneur who rescued HMV from bankruptcy in 2019.
It is hoped that a deal can be reached within three months, according to sources.
During 2024, 27 retailers of all sizes went bust, affecting 886 shops and 17,939 employees, according to the Centre for Retail Research.
The number of casualties is more than half the previous year’s rate of retail collapses when 61 chains failed and 971 shops were impacted.
Here, we explain some of the biggest retailers that got into trouble in 2024...
Sook was one of the first retail casualties of 2024 and was particularly depressing as it was meant to be the answer to empty high street stores.
The business operated 12 pop-up shops across the country in London, Birmingham, Southampton, Liverpool, Newcastle and Leeds and made high street space available for online brands like TikTok.
Tile Choice, a Midlands-based flooring retailer with 18 shops, went into administration in January 2024.
Nine stores were snapped up by rival Tile Giant but the rest were not saved.
The business had 116 staff and £16million turnover in the last financial year, but had struggled with a slowdown in spending.
LloydsPharmacy, once the UK’s second biggest community pharmacy chain, went into liquidation in late January with debts of £293million.
The previous year it had closed all of its pharmacies inside Sainsbury’s and divided its 1,000 pharmacy estate into packages of hundreds of stores that it then sold to rivals in smaller deals.
There are no more LloydsPharmacy-branded sites on the high street, but it continues to operate online.
EMPTY shops have become an eyesore on many British high streets and are often symbolic of a town centre’s decline.
The Sun's business editor Ashley Armstrong explains why so many retailers are shutting their doors.
In many cases, retailers are shutting stores because they are no longer the money-makers they once were because of the rise of online shopping.
Falling store sales and rising staff costs have made it even more expensive for shops to stay open.
The British Retail Consortium has predicted that the Treasury's hike to employer NICs from April 2025, will cost the retail sector £2.3billion.
At the same time, the minimum wage will rise to £12.21 an hour from April, and the minimum wage for people aged 18-20 will rise to £10 an hour, an increase of £1.40.
In some cases, retailers are shutting a store and reopening a new shop at the other end of a high street to reflect how a town has changed.
The problem is that when a big shop closes, footfall falls across the local high street, which puts more shops at risk of closing.
Retail parks are increasingly popular with shoppers, who want to be able to get easy, free parking at a time when local councils have hiked parking charges in towns.
Many retailers including Next and Marks & Spencer have been shutting stores on the high street and taking bigger stores in better-performing retail parks instead.
In some cases, stores have been shut when a retailer goes bust, as in the case of Carpetright, Debenhams, Dorothy Perkins, Paperchase, Ted Baker, The Body Shop, Topshop and Wilko to name a few.
What's increasingly common is when a chain goes bust a rival retailer or private equity firm snaps up the intellectual property rights so they can own the brand and sell it online.
They may go on to open a handful of stores if there is customer demand, but there are rarely ever as many stores or in the same places.
The Centre for Retail Research (CRR) has warned that around 17,350 retail sites are expected to shut down this year.
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