Over the next couple of years a total of £3.9billion will be available for survivors to pick up from retail casualties, according to Verdict Research. The majority of this will be in clothing & footwear and furniture & floorcoverings, says Verdict, whilst online retail, food & grocery and health & beauty will be least affected.

In the period January 2008 to 15 March 2009, says Verdict, there were 100 medium to large sized retail casualties. The casualties’ sales totalled £6.5 billion, equivalent to 2.3% of all estimated retail sales in 2009, plus 9,500 stores and 24 million square feet of space.

Of the 100 retailers covered in the report, only four casualties were pure online players and only one was a substantial business — Empire Direct.

“Although we expect just over £1 billion to be available to competitors from lost sales in clothing & footwear, it is unlikely that any one retailer will make significant market share gains across the board,” says Maureen Hinton, lead analyst at Verdict Research. “On the other hand, once the housing market recovers, the main players and non-specialists in furniture & floorcoverings are set to benefit from the £855m that we estimate will be available.”

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