Another Douglas shop will close its doors at the end of September.
Romini Limited, which sells school uniforms in Lord Street, began a closing down sale on Tuesday which will lead to final closure at the end of the month.
Mike Kelly, whose wife runs the shop, said: ‘We bought the business in 2002 but lately it’s just the way things have been going, turnover has gone down and down over the years to be honest.
‘It is partially the internet that has affected us but that’s not really the only factor, another big thing for us is the schools are selling a lot of the uniforms themselves now and people seem to prefer buying from them directly.’
Asked if there was anything that could have been done to try to keep the shop going, Mike said: ‘The only thing we could have possibly done to try to turn it around is diversify and sell other things perhaps, but that would have been a risk as well because you don’t really know how that’s going to go, so we’ve decided to close the shop down in the end.
‘It’s a shame but things have been going downhill for a while. First we cut down the days which we opened the shop to three days a week. We used to have four members of staff but now we only have two part-time members, one of which is my wife who runs the shop, so we had cut that down too.’
A spokesperson for the Department of Education and Children said: ‘Some of our schools do sell items of school uniform particular to their school for the assistance of parents, while others refer parents to local suppliers.
‘It’s something the schools have been doing for a while now.’
The closure comes after other shops such as Peter Luis and camera store Jessops closed earlier in the year, and entertainment giants HMV went into administration before being rescued by restructuring specialist Hilco.