Firm favourite shop Tiger is the latest to be hit by the coronavirus backlash and has confirmed it will close its stores in Newcastle and Sunderland at the end of September.
Seasoned shoppers relished the opening of Copenhagen-headquartered Tiger in Intu Eldon Square in 2015, which caused something of a retail revolution when it ventured into the UK for the first time in Basingstoke in 2005.
It later opened another store in The Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland but both are being shut down as businesses make cutbacks as they try to recover.
The chain specialises in stylish products for the home, office and everything in between including toys, decorations, ping pong bat covers and disco balls, and has grown rapidly since it was established in 1995, with hundreds of stores worldwide.
But bosses at Flying Tiger Copenhagen, the company who runs Tiger, have revealed that the company has carried out a review of their property portfolio and the decision to close both stores in our region was made on the back of that.
In a statement, the managing director of Flying Tiger in the UK & Ireland, Michael Burke said: “We can confirm that our Newcastle and Sunderland stores will be closing at the end of September.
“We have carried out a review of our property portfolio and regrettably decided on the option to close these two stores.”
Tiger becomes the latest high street chain to announce job losses, with WHSmith announcing last week that over 1,500 jobs will be cut due to low customer numbers following the Covid-19 lockdown.
Other retailers such as Boots, Debenhams and Marks & Spencer have all previously revealed planned job losses as the UK continues to recover from the coronavirus crisis.
It is unknown how many jobs in the North East will be affected by the Tiger store closures at the end of September.
The UK has shed almost 750,000 jobs since the start of the coronavirus lockdown, and more than a quarter of the workforce was still temporarily away from work as the economy began to reopen in June, official data showed on Tuesday.
The number of employees on UK payrolls was 730,000 lower in July than in March, a 2.5 per cent fall that was largely caused by companies freezing hiring, according to Office for National Statistics figures based on tax data.
And much larger numbers of workers are now at risk of falling into unemployment as the government gradually winds down its job retention scheme introduced at the start of the Covid-19 crisis.
