As shoppers mourn the disappearance of the WHSmith fascia from their high streets, and established retailers invest in long-dead names that once ruled British retail parks, thanks to exclusive research for Retail Week by Walnut Unlimited, we reveal the retailers that shoppers would most like to see return to their high streets.
In 1997, you might have popped into an MFI, had a browse in a Comet before taking the kids a whirl around a Toys R Us all in a single Saturday shopping trip. At the time, these retailers weren’t limping towards closure, but thriving giants and staples of the UK’s retail landscape. One by one, they all met their end and disappeared from our retail parks and high streets, but now these retailers are coming back from the dead, 28 years later (see what I did there?).
The phenomenon is an unusual one, given that the threats that took these retailers out of the market in the first place (like economic instability, low consumer confidence and ecommerce behemoth Amazon’s unstoppable march) persist to this day and are unlikely to shift. But could the power of nostalgia fuel these brands’ success this time around?
According to Walnut Unlimited research director Amy Nichols, it stands them in great stead: “The ‘rosy retrospection effect’ is a powerful behavioural science concept that helps explain why so many people feel emotionally attached to now-defunct retailers, and why they often remember them more fondly than they may have experienced them at the time.” she says.
“It’s not just nostalgia, it’s a psychological tendency to filter out the mundane or negative and amplify the emotional highs. We remember the excitement of Woolworths’ pick ‘n’ mix, not the long queues or cluttered aisles.”
According to Nichols, our attachment to long-gone retailers is rooted in three key drivers.
“Habit: many of these stores were part of our weekly routines. Woolworths for school supplies. BHS for homeware. Tammy Girl for Saturday shopping trips. When habits are disrupted, we feel it.
“Emotion: shopping isn’t just functional, it’s emotional. We remember how these places made us feel. The excitement of a new outfit. The comfort of a familiar layout. The joy of discovery. And identity: brands like Topshop and Miss Selfridge helped shape who we were. They weren’t just clothes, they were cultural markers. Losing them feels personal.”
The UK retailers that shoppers want back on the high street the most
Top of the podium by a long measure is Woolworths, which will be no surprise to many given the huge stir caused by its collapse in 2008 and the subsequent media frenzies every time it is rumoured to return. However, what may be surprising is that it isn’t just middle-aged people who are yearning for the pick-and-mix of their childhood.
An impressive 44% of 18-24 year-olds said they’d like to see it return, even though many of them would’ve still been in nappies when it went bust.
“There’s a growing appetite for “newstalgia”, the blending of old and new.” says Nichols. “Think of the resurgence of vinyl. The popularity of Y2K fashion. The TikTok love for 90s aesthetics. Gen Z may not remember Woolworths, but maybe they understand the appeal of a brand with soul?”
When we look at the ranking from that younger demographic alone, Woolworths ranks third behind only Topshop and Debenhams – which the group will be more familiar with because they disappeared from the high street more recently and are still available to shop with online.
Single-brand fashion retailers like Miss Selfridge, Oasis and Warehouse perform better in the younger group but also relatively well in the overall ranking. However Jane Norman, once a favourite of teenage Brits on the hunt for a school bag, is the brand consumers have the least desire to see make a return, with 50% of UK adults reporting they had never heard of it.
Despite the nineties and noughties fashion trends doing the rounds with Gen-Z, pinnacle of the Y2K fashion brand Tammy Girl lands fourth from the bottom. This means that more of today’s youngsters would rather see Dixons come back than either of the youth fashion brands.
Topshop comes in second for the younger group, but comes outside of the top five overall, pushed out of the top tier a few percentage points short of Mothercare. The result may be underwhelming for a retail brand that has promised it’s working towards “a permanent store presence at some point”.
18-24 year olds: which retailers do they want back on the high street?
Debenhams ranks top for this age group, and when we look at the wider results, department stores perform very strongly as something shoppers would like to see back on their high streets. C&A, which retreated from the UK in 2001 due to intense competition, and BHS, which closed almost ten years ago now due to pension deficits and declining sales, also make the top five in the overall list.
These results make sense when we consider how shopping habits have evolved post-pandemic. On almost every high street, no matter how small, department stores once offered the joy of discovery and created an exciting experience for shoppers, and although most of those stores are now gone, the same desire for experiential retail has not.
Across every category, there are now dozens of retailers investing in experiential flagships that hope to offer that same joy, but it just so happens that the pandemic, which reignited the nation’s love of physical shopping, was also the nail in the coffin for some department stores.
As more once-dead brands return to the land of the living, they may not be able to recreate their glory days, but they may be able to offer something that shoppers still yearn for: excitement, familiarity and connection. The Saturday shopping trip of 1997 might be impossible to recreate, but the emotional attachment the retailers created clearly hasn’t been forgotten – even by those who were too young to shop there.
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