Too many Pound shops in the UK

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Increase in Pound Shops
Do you think that the increase in pound shops are good for the economy. Do you think that they will create a monopoly, the same way that the supermarkets do.

Only yesterday, I bought a Ipod lead from the pound shop. This means that no other shop in the shopping mall could compete with price. I am sure that Curries-Digital sells it no less then £5.

Imagine how many Ipod leads that the pound shop would need to shift in order to make a profit, to pay their low paid workers.

Surely this isn’t good for the economy.

A pound shop? What's that?

Pound shops have most things for sale for £1 only. It tends to be solely cheap made Chinese imports. Some things are good value others not. The quality can be variable. If the recession bites hard then they may be the only shops still trading!

This kind of monopoly is dangerous because many of the items they sell are non-consumable such as work-tools and things you find in specialist shops, undercutting them to death.

I don't think they are any danger to the "real" tool shops. Chinese made tools tend to be very poor quality and tend to break, bend or simply not work. I know because I've made the mistake of buying such things from there in the past. You get what you pay for, certainly with tools. Pound shop aside, I always look at tools for the "Made in China" or "PPR" label and simply don't buy them, treating such labels as a hazard warning.

Pound shop = Dollar store in the US. Same concept, except the Brits have a different currency. As I understand it, the dollar store/pound shop concept is new in the UK, and is causing some consternation over there that dollar stores never did in the US.

Chav, the US has had dollar stores for about 15 years. At first there were all different companies, but the market eventually shook out and now an area will only have about two companies. Here in northern California we have Dollar Tree and 99c Only Store, and that's about it. We've been having some WiseBuys stores open up, everything there is under $10 (sign says $9.98 or less) so they have a larger selection than a plain dollar store. I got a really nice LED light flashlight at WiseBuys for $9.98 and it can go for $20 or more.

It seems that pure dollar stores in the US mainly sell stuff like household cleaning supplies, school/office supplies like paper and pens and calculators, cheap hand tools like screwdrivers and pliers, cheap plastic containers and garbage cans, and some really cheap food and/or expired food such as packaged cookies and hard candy. There were some in the beginning that had a wider selection, but those went away because they couldn't compete.

With inflation we're seeing more WiseBuys and Big Lots type places that are just cheap without limiting themselves to $1. I think when the UK goes through an inflationary period, pound shops will start to go away.

When I was just moving in to this neighborhood where I now live, I needed a measuring tape for the work I was doing on the mobile home to get it ready to move in. There are no Ace Hardware stores around here, and I didn't know of a Home Depot type place, so I drove around until I found a Dollar Tree. I bought a cheap Chinese tape for $1. So far, it's held up quite well. But yes, pliers and such are typically made of pot metal and break. The real threat to the old style hardware stores turned out to be the superstores like Home Depot and Lowes. They undercut everybody and forced the independents to close. The remaining real hardware stores are mostly part of the Ace chain and carry Ace brand stuff.

Pound stores or equivalent have existed in the UK for a similar amount of time. They are not new. They fill a particular niche in the market but I don't think they are going to put anyone out of business. The traditional hardware stores have been killed by the national chains such as B&Q and Homebase who undercut them to death.

The counter part in the U.S. is the Dollar Store where just about everything costs a buck.

ruveyn

most poundshop merchandise is cheap s**t which breaks easily. people do not buy from pound shops for lasting effect.. they buy wholly for cheapness and convenience. The merchandise which is NOT cheap knockoffs are merely proof that most companies inflate the price vastly in order to profit as much as possible.

The danger is less for the companies and shops which produce for a top or upper market range, at least not now, but more for those anywhere in the middle, because their costumers will now move to cheaper alternatives.

They killed the middle range shops: Companies like Fein-Powertools just do not deliver to B&Q, Homebase and others of this kind.

If you believe in the capitalist principle of free competition it is up to the consumer to decide what kind of goods are worth paying for. If consumers are inexperienced and stupid they will purchase inferior goods on the basis of price alone. In the matter of food there are government organizations to oversee that harmful foods are not imported or produced locally. This is what some people consider an invasion of socialism. If this type of government supervision were extended to international wages and goods quality then so-called free competition would be somewhat suppressed. Which may be a good thing.

When shopping habits change to thrift, the paradox-of-thrift sets in [youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmhBuqMhY2U[/youtube]

I don't think pound shops help, because the product are too cheap

The basic complaint against inexpensive shops is not that they are cheap but that they do not return good value for expenditure. The idiotic video that indicates people should spend more to prop up the economy is based on the false idea that people have surplus income to spend no matter what. But the reason people are not spending is that they cannot pay their debts now and are suffering for the loss of housing, health insurance, education, and other vital basic expenditures. They have dug themselves already so deeply into debt by mortgaging their houses and depleting their credit cards that they are losing the ability for basic maintenance, not to speak of whatever fancy extras the commercial institutions are offering. Banks are not lending because businesses cannot offer assurances that the loans can be repaid and businesses are not expanding because there is no market for their goods. What is needed is some way for people to be paid proper wages so that they have the income to spend. By shipping jobs overseas to gain cheap labor industry has destroyed the market for the goods, whatever their cost.

That is so true. I've watched manufacturing industries in the UK slide into oblivion over the last few decades as they outsourced more and more aspects of the manufacturing process overseas in an attempt to combat cheap imports. If the identical product is available for half the price produced in a sweat shop in India or elsewhere then people will buy it rather than the same product made in the UK at a fair wage.

The argument always used to be that the UK has a strong service industry and that is where the money will be. This too has been outsourced. I've been in the computer software industry for thirty years and outsourcing has virtually killed this as a profession in the UK. Nobody want to study computing at university any more because there are either no jobs or they will be competing on salary with someone in India on a dollar a day.

The Western European and American economies are killing themselves with all the cheap imports and outsourcing of services abroad.