When researching and fact-checking for this blog in 2007, I was accompanied by a friend who found the architectural details of many of the shops on the High Street quite interesting, so he took a few photos. One of the shops we looked at was Brooklyn, a firm which announced the commencement of its operations with a huge banner spread across the whole of its frontage.

It announced itself as providing an 'opening offer', though it did not specify on the banner what that offer actually was. I can only assume that this was an offer of some kind being made because the business is opening. I thought this was odd at that time. This is still an oddity to me. I first wrote about this shop back in October 2007, but the sign saying it is in the process of opening is still there above the door.

A look in the windows last October indicated that there was a sale going on, with various low prices quoted as reductions from what we have to presume were previously advertised prices. There was a sign saying 50% off.

As he took his picture, my companion, was shouted at by a man, who he presumed to be the owner, who told him that it was against the law to take a photo of a shop front in the United Kingdom. I found this surprising, and still do. I asked last October if anyone knows about this so-called law? No one I have spoken to has managed to come up with any indication of the law in question. I also posed the question that maybe the the man was just reacting because he has something he thought he needed to hide. (The shop, by the way, has a sign saying it sells Victoria's Secret and Bath and Bodyworks on sale inside.) I still can't think of any better explanation for his attitude.

In May 2008, I wrote that the 'opening offer' sign was still over the door and that beneath it was a sign saying that Brooklyn is having a closing down sale. I wondered how long it would take to shut a shop that has taken so long to open.

Well, on August 15th 2008 the closing down sale was still going on. No date for closure had been provided, and in the intervening months, they had been selling their products but not winding down their business, continuing to replenish the shelves. In the circumstances, this shop looked to me to be operating a banned business practice in breach of Paragraph 15 of Schedule 1 of the Consumer Protection from Unfair
Trading Regulations 2008 (Guidance March 2008 edition):

"6 BANNED PRACTICES (SCHEDULE 1)
Outright prohibitions

(15) Claiming that the trader is about to cease trading or move premises
when he is not.

(Example)
A trader runs a clothes shop. He puts up a sign in the shop window
stating: 'Closing down sale'. Unless the shop was genuinely closing
down this would breach the CPRs."

I went past them in September and the signs were still there. So imagine my surprise and delight to see the offending windows completely see-through on 11 September 2008, with all of the offending notices taken down! The strange thing was, that without the eyesores, the shop looked bright, well laid out and attractive enough for someone to want to actually go in and have a look around. After one of the longest closing down sales in local history is over, I hoped that with their new approach to being open about displaying and marketing their goods, Brooklyn will flourish.

They have however subsequently been unable to resist the temptation to have another 'up to' 50% off sale like most of the rest of the High Street this winter, and have even put up a sign in the left hand window saying that the shop is for sale.

[Updated 9 January 2009]