Contrary to popular belief, it's too easy to blame rapacious landlords for slamming up rents, local landlords are actually taking offers on properties rather than them standing empty...
My business is about to close as I've come to the end of my lease and sales aren't what I can rely on, the costs are high, staffing, insurance, energy etc., etc., the biggest thing we've found is that people come in, we make them a cuppa, chat, advise and demonstrate. The customer then goes away and buys it for a couple of quid cheaper off the Internet.
The number of times that has happened makes me wonder why I bothered. After Christmas we had quite a few people bringing stuff in for repair, exchange or warranty work on products we don't even stock, let alone actually sold to the customer - Internet sales again but the buyers were too idle or it was too expensive or inconvenient to return to the original vendor.
Then they moaned how it was unfair that we held the right to charge for any work we did or costs incurred returning to manufacturers...
We tried to promote local hobbies and the various modelling disciplines but we can't carry on doing it for nothing.