Clarks is closing its shop on Putney High Street after at least 20 years, with posters in the windows sending customers to Hammersmith and Clapham Junction instead.
It’s where Putney parents took their children to have their feet measured for school shoes. One parent’s review of the shop describes a member of staff measuring all four of their children and bringing down shoes for each to try. If you remember when it first opened, tell us below.
The posters, in both windows of number 94, give no closing date and no reason. Both shops they name are about two miles away, at Kings Mall in Hammersmith and on St John’s Road at Clapham Junction. A sale sign inside offers up to 50% off.
Nor do Clarks’s own results suggest a reason. The company returned to profit last year, making £31.1m after tax against a loss of £39.3m in 2024, and says it is opening new shops.
The closure comes in the month Putney’s businesses vote on whether to keep Positively Putney, the business improvement district (BID) that pays for extra cleaning, security and events in the town centre from a levy on local businesses. Ballot papers went out on 8 October and must be back by 5pm on Thursday 5 November. If the vote fails, Positively Putney closes at the end of March.
Its plan for the next five years is asking businesses to pay more. Around 470 of them would pay 1.5% of the rateable value of their premises, up from 1.25%; rateable value is the figure business rates are worked out from. That would raise £495,000 a year, against £341,253 from around 400 businesses in the year to March.
Clarks is not the first to point Putney’s customers somewhere else. The mobile network EE left its old shop at number 87 with posters that still say “We have a new home” and point to the Southside shopping centre in Wandsworth, “an 8 minute drive away.” When the long-standing Putney shop Huttons closed last year, it blamed falling footfall and high rent, and kept its shop in Battersea.
Is Putney becoming a place people pass through rather than shop in?
Who shops in Putney
In the BID’s own shopper survey last year, nearly nine in ten of the just over 500 people who replied lived in SW15, and three quarters walked into town. Their biggest complaints were the traffic and the empty shops.
Positively Putney says it has helped bring people back to Putney. Its campaign site credits its work with having “helped rebuild confidence and footfall”, and the first of its four priorities for the next five years, “Destination Putney”, promises “more visitors and footfall”.
Yet its plan spends less on marketing and events than the current one, which businesses backed in 2021: 20% of spending, down from 35%. That is £103,500 a year, almost £20,000 less than the current plan’s £123,350. Cleaning and security together would take 45%, up from 25%.
The BID says the split follows what businesses told it in a six-month consultation, in which 83% valued its crime prevention work and 80% valued pressure washing, against 70% for its Christmas campaigns.
Its plan also says it already shares footfall and sales figures with businesses. Those figures could show whether more people are coming to Putney or fewer.
M&S, by contrast, came back to the High Street in February, eight years after it left, and the queue started at 6.30am. Six empty shopfronts around the town centre have new occupiers or soon will, among them a spa, a Pilates studio in EE’s old unit and a coffee shop.
What other towns did
In 2010 Altrincham, in Greater Manchester, had the worst shop vacancy rate in the country: more than 30% of its shops stood empty. Trafford Council set up and paid for a town centre team, refurbished the market hall, and narrowed the roads and added crossings to slow the traffic. By the end of 2017 the vacancy rate was 7.9%, and in 2018 Altrincham was named England’s champion high street.
Before the ballot closes, Positively Putney has two questions to answer: what do its footfall figures show, and how will spending less on promotion bring in more visitors? Wandsworth Council, which collects the levy and runs the ballot, has one: what is it doing about chains leaving the town centre? And the landlords who own the High Street’s shops have another: are the rents being asked ones that Putney’s shops can pay?
The ballot result is due on Friday 6 November. What replaces Clarks at number 94 remains to be seen.
Have your say
Do you remember Clarks arriving at number 94, and what was there before? Do you still shop on Putney High Street, and if not, where do you go instead, and why? What would bring you back? Tell us in the comments below or email postbox@putney.news.
If your business is voting: ballot papers must be back by 5pm on Thursday 5 November. Replacement papers are issued on 30 October; contact Positively Putney at info@positivelyputney.co.uk if yours has not arrived. The result is due the next day.
This Clark’s is a franchise shop. Annoying .
Wouldn’t it be worth analysing the demographics of Putney and the UK in general?
Globally some see a significant growth in services and products to the elderly, not to younger families.
It might help understand what the drivers and inhibitors are for businesses in general in Putney, as well as the impact on taxes the council levies.
As business owners look into quality retirements, it might not be too surprising to see some shops closing down or, at best, changing hands.