Once again, landlords are stuck between a rock and a hard place

The greeting cards retailer has made it clear that half of the stores aren’t up to scratch, but at the same time it doesn’t plan to let go of the Birthdays brand all together.

In the case of Stylo, the answer from the landlords and creditors was in the end inevitably going to be a no. And JJB Sports’ offer to soften the blow with rent payments in advance made that CVA attractive enough to accept.

Clinton Cards might not be promising a CVA for Birthdays, but it is in a similar position in that it has a viable brand but unsuccessful stores to manage, and it needs to trim the fat for the business to carry on.

Having another 150 stores come onto the market is the last thing landlords need, especially as it’s the failing stores that will be on the table.

But as with recent similar examples, the fact is the landlords will have little choice than to take back the stores.

In better times, Clinton might have been able to make Birthdays work without placing the brand into administration and offloading half the stores, and landlords might not have to acquiesce and take a failing set of stores off their hands as they are likely to do.

Neither side would chose to have things this way, but until there are real signs of the market picking up, there will be more of these to come.