Top store to close doors

A warehouse camping store at a Wolverhampton city centre retail park is closing its doors in days, leaving 10 workers out of a job.

Handwritten signs have gone up at Barretts of Feckenham, on St John's Retail Park, telling shoppers about the shock closure on Sunday.

It comes after the store opened in a blaze of glory on the site just over 18 months ago but is believed to have lost money because of falling sales.

The store, which has other branches in Redditch, Derbyshire and Leeds, is the latest to announce closure in the city as the credit crunch takes hold.

Just weeks ago sports shop JJB announced it would be closing its Queen Street branch after a downturn in trade, to be taken over by its arch rival Sports Direct.

The former Jade shoe shop in Queen Street has also been boarded up after closing more than a year ago.

Staff at Barretts were given the shock news that the store would be closing last Friday.

Chris Beddow, aged 27, who was made manager at the store last month, said that 10 members of staff would be losing their jobs.

"There hasn't been much time to take in the news but we are all being paid until the end of the month and will get redundancy."

He said there would be no closing down sale.

Barretts opened on St John's Retail Park in November 2006. It had moved to occupy bigger premises after being based in Victoria Street for 30 years and before that Cleveland Street.