16 ms·

The candy stores of Oxford Street

142 points by zeristor 5y ago

petecooper 5y ago
>There are those who say these shops are a front for dubious trading, maybe even money laundering, and that some overlord is repeatedly opening and closing a selection of outlets to keep on the right side of business legislation. See also: https://whynow.co.uk/read/candy-shops-oxford-street https://whynow.co.uk/read/candy-shops-oxford-street https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/m3lh95/those_american_candy_shops_on_oxford_streets/ https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/m3lh95/those_americ... https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/cnkcaz/private_eye_on_west_end_souvenir_shops/ https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/cnkcaz/private_eye_...
- dataengineer56 5y ago
  I was expecting one of these links to be the link in the submission to be honest. The OP's link doesn't even ask the question as to why there are 11 sweet shops on one of the world's most famous shopping streets. These pages are much more interesting.
- gilleain 5y ago
  It seems more likely that they exist for the same reason the numerous shops selling various small cheap items (phone box shaped fridge magnets, hats with "I love London", etc) exist. It's a way to fill a commercial unit until a more permanent tenant arrives. So they shut down and reopen elsewhere because the situation was always temporary.
- lordnacho 5y ago
  I support the money laundering hypothesis. Something similar has happened in Copenhagen, where you also see an unnatural amount of candy stores. There's been several busts related to VAT fraud, it can't be the only form of criminality related to it. Just do the napkin math of what the rent is and how many sweets are bought in a shop, and the catchment of each shop. For reference I had a look at a large restaurant unit in the suburbs. £120k rent and rates (local business tax) per year. That's £10k worth of sweets you'll need to sell each month, just to cover rent, and it's not Oxford Street in the middle of London. (My guess is rent on Oxford Street is a low multiple.) That's a thousand people a month who have to spend a tenner on sweets over 30 days, 30-odd people a day including weekends. Initially plausible, since there's a lot of footfall, but: - Someone who buys sweets in one shop is not gonna buy again in another down the road. There's so many of these shops on and around Oxford Street. - Most people aren't into sweets. Kids are, but they are only a small proportion of Oxford Street footfall. - The shops have a bunch of staff too. Guessing minimum wage, but that will add ~20K per head per year when you add employment related taxes. - Fitting the shop costs a few 10K. - Sweets themselves cost something, probably not a huge amount compared to the sale price, but something. Compare them to the Apple shop, which certainly sells enough stuff to pay rent. Their shop is constantly heaving with people, and their items for sale can cost thousands. These candy stores, when you walk by, are pretty much empty, and they sell something that can be satisfied for a quid.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    Amsterdam has this with Nutella-pancake-waffle-icecream parlours and vacuum-packed Gouda shops (which displace actually good cheese mongers that cater to locals and visitors alike with a good selection of cheeses). Nobody really seems to know for sure, but it seems to be a combination of a shotgun approach to finding the golden location for a souvenir/tourist-experience shop and money laundering. These are, as the article points out, chains of shops with a murky web of owners behind it. The Amsterdam municipality has stopped granting any new permits for these tourist shops now.
    - lordnacho 5y ago
      Synergies with crime are massive. If you can make the business almost work legit then you can pump the amount of money through the books by quite a bit. At the same time if you are in a country where there's some sort of employment related benefit or you get higher unemployment after having worked, you can put a bunch of your gang on the payroll.
  - christkv 5y ago
    This happens all the time with other stores. - Kebab shops who declares tons and tons of sales but nobody is ever seen entering the store and it's always empty. - China goods stores that are the same. Classic money laundering for drugs and other illegal activities. I guess candy stores is the new thing.
    - Veen 5y ago
      It's not just in big cities either. My small provincial town has several shops and take-aways that appear to do no business at all. They're open for a couple of afternoons a week and never have any customers. There's a pizza place run by a single elderly man who gets annoyed if you go in and ask for a pizza (although he will treat you to a lecture about how wonderful Vladimir Putin is).
  - blowski 5y ago
    I would guess the sweets are traded internationally to have invoices that launder the money. Since the sweets never go bad, when the shop goes bankrupt, they can be resold to some other part of the laundering outfit. If you're interested in learning more about money laundering, check out the Dark Money Files podcast. https://www.thedarkmoneyfiles.com https://www.thedarkmoneyfiles.com
- grenoire 5y ago
  This is it in Amsterdam too, from souvenir shops stocking plastic garbage to stores full of phone accessories. It's known that these are all fronts, and somehow managed to survive the series of lockdowns. It's the big city alternative to cash-heavy biz like car washes or laundromats.
- teddyh 5y ago
  Maybe the rent increases have made these the only viable business models. EDIT: The business models I am referring to are “dubious trading, maybe even money laundering”, not “candy stores”.
  - Tsiklon 5y ago
    I think you’re being overly generous. These shops are very very prevalent on Oxford Street, to the point of there being ten to twelve in the course of several hundred meters. They all have cheap signage, incredibly expensive stock and, other than tourists, very little footfall. They all look quite sketchy.
    - gilleain 5y ago
      Only one point is 'off' though: 1) "cheap signage" - so they are minimising costs? 2) "expensive stock" - maximising profits 3) "low footfall" - this does seem odd I still think that they get some deal on the rent, but they could also be dodgy at the same time. Would be nice if they were replaced by better shops.
      - dataengineer56 5y ago
        The way it works (generalising, read links for better info) is: 1. The landlord loses his long-standing tenant during lockdown because they can't afford rent anymore. 2. Instead of letting the shop go empty, the landlord creates their own separate sweet shop company and effectively pays rent to themselves. 3. Towards the end of the tax year, the shop is declared bankrupt. The landlord can take some tax benefits for having a failed tenant who can't pay the bills. 4. Typically the shop would have to auction everything they own (signage, shelves, tills, products) to claim back money, but no one wants to buy American sweets at a business auction. 5. The landlord puts the sweets into storage (they have long expiry dates and don't take up much space) and repeats the same trick next year.
    - teddyh 5y ago
      I meant “these” as in “dubious trading, maybe even money laundering”, not “candy stores”. Post edited to clarify.
- mpalfrey 5y ago
  Came here to make this exact comment. These are more than likely dodgy.
- DrBazza 5y ago
  It just feels like yet another murky chain of property ownership. How can these shops possibly sell enough candy to its target market of kids to pay the rent, when there are no kids on Oxford St.? Something from 'under the counter' instead? Or just a case of the "landlord" filling it until someone better comes along because Westminster City Council absolutely have to make Oxford St. look like it's busy and bustling as it's allegedly the UK's most popular shopping street? It would lose it's reputation if it looked like any other UK high street, that is to say, full of closed shops and nail bars. To be honest, it wasn't much different in the 80s and 90s. More major shops, but still lots of weird ones that had no right to exist on Oxford St. but were there nonetheless. In 2022, it's far more obvious.
  - Freak_NL 5y ago
    The presumed target audience probably isn't children, it is mostly older teens and adult (British) tourists who may recognize American candy from social media and US films/series. But as others point out, that is likely just a front for money laundering.
    - DrBazza 5y ago
      I think that Westminster Council's needs and requirements on businesses and landlords on Oxford Street is probably underestimated though. But I agree, there's something really shady going here.
  - bidirectional 5y ago
    Oxford St is full of kids, probably one of the main places they congregate in central London.
- wdb 5y ago
  Yes, I always wonder how many travel bags + souvenirs shops you need on street. On Queensway a pretty short street there are so many of these shops that it is getting ridiculous.
possiblelion 5y ago
I studied in London for two years out of by three year BA program (2018-2020), and due to COVID had to move back to Estonia to complete the last year remotely. Recently I visited London again to catch up with old friends and was really bamboozled by these "candy shops", they all had the distinct air of suspiciousness around them. I've never really liked Oxford Street however, even before the flood of US candy. Shopping malls are much better than high streets for actually buying things imho.
- lozenge 5y ago
  Bamboozled means the shops tricked you, maybe you mean you were befuddled (confused)?
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  Oxford Street would be a much nicer environment if it were closed to traffic from TCR to Marble Arch, perhaps with a thoroughfare for Regent Street. It's been proposed many times over the years, but Westminster council are against it. If the street were pedestrianised, and furnished with seating areas, landscaping, and perhaps some small cafe/restaurant units in the former roadway, it would be a much more pleasant environment to shop.
  - petecooper 5y ago
    >TCR Tottenham Court Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Court_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Court_Road
  - basisword 5y ago
    The large amount of traffic going through it has to go somewhere. On top of that, given the huge number of pedestrians on Oxford street I’d bet that with restaurants spilling out it would just become an even more awful place to walk through. Any of then streets that I saw pedestrianised during covid actually became worse. Between tables, cyclists, and crowds congregating getting through them became more difficult.
    - 5y ago
jzellis 5y ago
Money laundering on Oxford Street? Who could possibly be doing that? looks directly across Hyde Park at the big houses and luxury flats with appallingly tacky sports cars out front Oh, right.
- maxehmookau 5y ago
  It's not money laundering when it's rich people in mansions; it's tax evasion, which is what smart people do. /s
  - verisimi 5y ago
    Not tax evasion, tax planning, you mean.
hnlmorg 5y ago
Up until earlier this year I spent a few years working just off Oxford Street. It's amazing how much that street has changed in such a short space of time. Definitely feels a lot shadier now than it used to. While I'm not a big fan of most forms of shopping, it still feels a great loss to see what it's now become.
- alibarber 5y ago
  I worked for nearly a decade in Soho and moved away (from London and the UK) just before the start of the pandemic and before these stores I can remember the famous headset-mic-wearing-perfume-salesmen throwing out boxes of perfume to totally-not-in-on-it-plants. It's always had that kinda crappy tourist trap sleezy vibe that you'd find in any other big city to me. That said Soho in general seems to have evolved with better restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, streetfood and smaller boutique shops whereas Oxford St didn't seem to read the writing on the wall when it came to the viability of large department stores selling things that people needed but could get elsewhere easier.
  - iainmerrick 5y ago
    The section to the east of Oxford Circus has been like that for a long time. If the section to the west has gone the same way, that's a bit depressing (but as you say, not really surprising).
  - dkdbejwi383 5y ago
    The department stores (Selfridges, mainly) are really the only reason to shop on Oxford St any more. The other high street shops can mostly be found in either of the Westfields, One New Change, Canary Wharf, Upper St, etc, where there's much less traffic and tourists. Or ordered online.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      I remember the original plan was for many bus routes to be removed from Oxford Street once Crossrail opened. Is that still the plan? I can't see any recent news on this.
deanc 5y ago
These stores have popped up in a lot of major European cities. You should avoid them like the plague - regardless of their background - they are a complete rip-off. Often 10-20x the price of a comparable store.
- bidirectional 5y ago
  You're exaggerating massively. They're expensive but 10-20x a comparable shop would imply they're charging £30+ for a chocolate bar.
  - deanc 5y ago
    Maybe not for individual items, but usually they are set up not for a chocolate bar but rather these giant over-sized "pick-n-mix" style candy where you put many in your bag. The price per 100g is definitely inflated as much as I suggested
- Pamar 5y ago
  I noticed something similar in Prague (Summer 2020) - I am single and have no kids so I had no reason to visit one, but I did find odd that there was such a large number of shops selling just extra-sugary stuff. I am not 100% sure that we are talking of the same kind of shops, though. Here is what I mean: https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=candy&find_loc=Prague https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=candy&find_loc=Prague
  - lproven 5y ago
    Yeah, there are more than one type of such shop. I live in Prague. I am not Czech. I do go the Old Town, [1] because I like it, it's pretty, [2] when showing visitors around, and [3] because there are good places to eat and drink there. But in my experience, most Czechs never do. But there are tonnes of junk touristy shops that no local would ever dream of going to, Czech or otherwise. OTOH there are places like this: https://www.candy-store.cz/en/ https://www.candy-store.cz/en/ ... not in the Old Town, in the New (Prague 2), which are a useful resource for foodstuffs from faraway countries that we immigrant workers can't get anywhere else. And yes, for some of them, we will pay inflated prices, at least occasionally. So don't judge them all the same. Saying that, some of my visitors to the city _did_ want to go to the Chocolate Museum and other touristy places in the centre. :-)
jwmoz 5y ago
Should be illegal to have shops named "candy" instead of "sweets" in London.
- vinay427 5y ago
  It would seem rather silly and ironic for the British to adopt a prescriptive stance now. Candy has been used in English since about the 15th century, independent of the US. The same applies to many other differences in which the British more often chose to diverge while the US preserved the traditional term, such as “football” vs. “soccer”, etc. https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/2004/1028/p18s02-hfgn.html https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/2004/1028/p18s0...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- iamben 5y ago
  I think this is a deliberate choice. The sweets are all American. As a Brit, hearing 'candy' makes me think of American sweets, hearing 'sweets' makes me think of rhubarb and custard.
matthew40 5y ago
What made the blood of that area has been gradually removed and killed by having musical venues closed (Denmark street for instance) to make room for Starbucks and Primarks, so it is no surprise that sooner or later, there would be a bill to pay, which is exactly this: a soul-less street.
- bencollier49 5y ago
  Agree totally with this. It's been exacerbated by the Crossrail work at Tottenham Court Road, which seems to have completely cut out the heart of the area - related to the issues at Denmark Street and elsewhere, like the Astoria.
  - iNerdier 5y ago
    And covid finally killed it. There’s what, two remaining music related shops there?
- thorin 5y ago
  Denmark street was so good, cheap venues with quality bands like the 12 bar. Is it true that the music shops are moving out too. It was always on my must visit location when when I went to the West End.
Traster 5y ago
The real story here is that over the last 12 years of UK government, austerity policies have cut back all public services to the point where they don't actually exist. Criminal Barristers are currently on strike because the legal aid system is so broken. Close to 10% of the entire country are currently on an NHS waiting list, with that number expected to continue to rise until atleast 2024. Meanwhile, the tax burden in the UK has reached it's highest point in 70 years - putting us in a similar position to the 1950s where the UK was paying back the debts from WW2. The Home Office has just announced that after years of failing to stop immigrants from reaching the UK by boarding small boats to cross the channel, the government has entirely abandoned its responsbility to grant asylum to asylum seekers and instead will pay millions of pounds to have Rwanda do it for us (in order to deter the immigrants that we've failed to stop crossing the channel, because we can't stop them crossing the channel). Essentially we see this story repeatedly and the underlying question is "Why has no one actually investigated what seems to be an obviously illegal enterprise" and the answer is "Because we don't employ anyone to do that anymore".
- dataengineer56 5y ago
  ---
  - basisword 5y ago
    The government’s plan has faced objections from across the political spectrum. It’s widely accepted that it’s highly immoral. The people that agree with it are by far a minority.
    - Veen 5y ago
      It's unpopular with left-leaning journalists, lawyers, and politicians. Polls are mixed about whether it's popular with the general public, but that's what elections are for.
  - Jaruzel 5y ago
    > In the plans, single men who arrive illegally in boats or lorries will be sent to Rwanda Which depending on which organisation you speak to, may or may not be legal: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61122241 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61122241 Personally, I'm embarrassed at how xenophobic and closed-minded my country has become.
Sholmesy 5y ago
I live in Soho, and have watched these places pop up & shut down on Oxford St constantly for the last 5 years. One factor is that in recent times these commercial rents have begun offering incredibly low rates for the first year, that then get increased in subsequent years. This makes it perfect for these low cost setups to move in, and move out constantly. I do think that there is an aspect of money laundering going on. I've literally never seen anyone in one of these stores, so yeah. Side Note: I got a weekly newsletter from Westminster council the other day, bragging about a raid they had done on some of those tourist trap places, and found £X amount of CBD products that weren't approved, non-sanctioned vapes/batteries etc. They also deported some undocumented people working there... These places are not the same as the candy places, but they are definately adjacent/similar setup.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  How much would it cost to keep a place like this running for a month? Rent + wages, assuming it needs just 1 full time staffer. Their stock doesn't go bad very fast at least, so if they do pack it in they can sell most of it on to someone else. That said, money laundering is pretty much everywhere; there's so many shops that don't really seem to get any business. Over here there's tons of phone shops, they sell phones, subscriptions (the provider is often plastered all over), phone cases and repairs, but I don't believe they get much traffic at all.
  - op00to 5y ago
    Why do you think it money laundering? What’s the exact mechanism?
    - hoseja 5y ago
      Well, the usual scheme is you just report inflated sales, no?
      - op00to 5y ago
        I read a little further in the article and they mentioned that. Is it really that easy? I was hoping there was SOMETHING else besides just .. simple lying.
donthellbanme 5y ago
"all the goods are unpriced". I've run into this a lot lately. I'm in CA and I thought we had laws against no prices?
- kergonath 5y ago
  Yeah this does not really sound legal. Or if it is, it should not be.
  - dane-pgp 5y ago
    Especially if the candy still has American prices in dollars visible on the packaging (which would be doubly confusing for tourists there).
te_chris 5y ago
These places are often on business-rates-only leases. For the landlord, they're a cheap way to keep costs low while they wait for a proper long-term tenant. For the tenant, well, cheap way to get a prime address to run a cash business, maybe....
- otherotherchris 5y ago
  Vacant property insurance can also be more expensive in certain locations as untenanted buildings tend to get quickly vandalized and have higher rates of arson. Easier to just put a popup retailer in it on a peppercorn rent.
aphrax 5y ago
When I lived in London it was the Aberdeen Angus Steak House [0], never any customers despite being on the main thoroughfairs.. [0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/4813176/Who-goes-there.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/4813176/Who-goes-th...
- woleium 5y ago
  Iirc that was discovered to be a laundry in the mid 00s?
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  I feel like I have seen plenty of tourists eating there (and always felt sorry for them). Rather than money laundering or anything shady like that, I always assumed it was just a fiendishly well-designed tourist trap. The branding is perfectly pitched to make it somehow look both classy and cheap (which are exactly the two things you want and need as a tourist in London).
- thorin 5y ago
  I went there with family in the 80s as a kid. They weren't that bad, but you have to remember the standard of dining in the 70/80s uk was pretty terrible at that point. There were lots of people there and not much choice. At this point McDonalds was a new and cool thing in the UK and it was many years before things like Weatherspoons came and brought cheap, low quality dining/drinking to the city masses. I remember at that time chains were seen as being quite cool and fancy and the choices were bad pubs full of old men that didn't allow children, fish and chips or breakfast places.
djhworld 5y ago
Pandemic might have accelerated the opening of these shops but tbh Oxford Street has been like this for years, although mostly those shops selling trinket souvenirs and other tat. Souvenir shops make sense for a city that attracts a lot of tourists, but when it's 5 shops all on the same street, it's a bit weird
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
I don't know, sometimes these things run in fads. We had two car parts stores in my town of ~20000 people for years. Then new ones started opening in disused storefronts, until we had 13. They all closed after a couple of years, except for the original two. Why? Maybe a magazine article about the best retail startup. Maybe a banker saw the numbers for such places were good and recruited folks. I don't know.
quattrofan 5y ago
drumhead 5y ago
Its likely that they're a front for money laundering. It used to be Souvenir shops until that scam was broken up by the police and HMRC. Before that it was the auctions scams and the closing down sales shops. These shops are probably being investigated now, in a year or so we'll probably see a major operation to take down the people behind it.
lizardactivist 5y ago
Could be money-laundering, could be something else. Whatever they are, they are no coincidence.
redeyedtreefrog 5y ago
Time Out did an investigation that suggests maybe they really are legitimate businesses making a profit, and not money laundering fronts as commonly suggested: https://www.timeout.com/london/shopping/why-is-central-london-suddenly-full-of-american-sweetshops https://www.timeout.com/london/shopping/why-is-central-londo... But I dunno, the sheer number still seems kinda sus.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Funny, they probably got the one that is the most legitimate-ish of them and ran with it The whole article seems forced. But yeah the article is right in that it also works as a tourist trap

142 points by zeristor 5y ago

>There are those who say these shops are a front for dubious trading, maybe even money laundering, and that some overlord is repeatedly opening and closing a selection of outlets to keep on the right side of business legislation. See also: https://whynow.co.uk/read/candy-shops-oxford-street https://whynow.co.uk/read/candy-shops-oxford-street https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/m3lh95/those_american_candy_shops_on_oxford_streets/ https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/m3lh95/those_americ... https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/cnkcaz/private_eye_on_west_end_souvenir_shops/ https://old.reddit.com/r/london/comments/cnkcaz/private_eye_...

dataengineer56 5y ago
I was expecting one of these links to be the link in the submission to be honest. The OP's link doesn't even ask the question as to why there are 11 sweet shops on one of the world's most famous shopping streets. These pages are much more interesting.
gilleain 5y ago
It seems more likely that they exist for the same reason the numerous shops selling various small cheap items (phone box shaped fridge magnets, hats with "I love London", etc) exist. It's a way to fill a commercial unit until a more permanent tenant arrives. So they shut down and reopen elsewhere because the situation was always temporary.
lordnacho 5y ago
I support the money laundering hypothesis. Something similar has happened in Copenhagen, where you also see an unnatural amount of candy stores. There's been several busts related to VAT fraud, it can't be the only form of criminality related to it. Just do the napkin math of what the rent is and how many sweets are bought in a shop, and the catchment of each shop. For reference I had a look at a large restaurant unit in the suburbs. £120k rent and rates (local business tax) per year. That's £10k worth of sweets you'll need to sell each month, just to cover rent, and it's not Oxford Street in the middle of London. (My guess is rent on Oxford Street is a low multiple.) That's a thousand people a month who have to spend a tenner on sweets over 30 days, 30-odd people a day including weekends. Initially plausible, since there's a lot of footfall, but: - Someone who buys sweets in one shop is not gonna buy again in another down the road. There's so many of these shops on and around Oxford Street. - Most people aren't into sweets. Kids are, but they are only a small proportion of Oxford Street footfall. - The shops have a bunch of staff too. Guessing minimum wage, but that will add ~20K per head per year when you add employment related taxes. - Fitting the shop costs a few 10K. - Sweets themselves cost something, probably not a huge amount compared to the sale price, but something. Compare them to the Apple shop, which certainly sells enough stuff to pay rent. Their shop is constantly heaving with people, and their items for sale can cost thousands. These candy stores, when you walk by, are pretty much empty, and they sell something that can be satisfied for a quid.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  Amsterdam has this with Nutella-pancake-waffle-icecream parlours and vacuum-packed Gouda shops (which displace actually good cheese mongers that cater to locals and visitors alike with a good selection of cheeses). Nobody really seems to know for sure, but it seems to be a combination of a shotgun approach to finding the golden location for a souvenir/tourist-experience shop and money laundering. These are, as the article points out, chains of shops with a murky web of owners behind it. The Amsterdam municipality has stopped granting any new permits for these tourist shops now.
  - lordnacho 5y ago
    Synergies with crime are massive. If you can make the business almost work legit then you can pump the amount of money through the books by quite a bit. At the same time if you are in a country where there's some sort of employment related benefit or you get higher unemployment after having worked, you can put a bunch of your gang on the payroll.
- christkv 5y ago
  This happens all the time with other stores. - Kebab shops who declares tons and tons of sales but nobody is ever seen entering the store and it's always empty. - China goods stores that are the same. Classic money laundering for drugs and other illegal activities. I guess candy stores is the new thing.
  - Veen 5y ago
    It's not just in big cities either. My small provincial town has several shops and take-aways that appear to do no business at all. They're open for a couple of afternoons a week and never have any customers. There's a pizza place run by a single elderly man who gets annoyed if you go in and ask for a pizza (although he will treat you to a lecture about how wonderful Vladimir Putin is).
- blowski 5y ago
  I would guess the sweets are traded internationally to have invoices that launder the money. Since the sweets never go bad, when the shop goes bankrupt, they can be resold to some other part of the laundering outfit. If you're interested in learning more about money laundering, check out the Dark Money Files podcast. https://www.thedarkmoneyfiles.com https://www.thedarkmoneyfiles.com
grenoire 5y ago
This is it in Amsterdam too, from souvenir shops stocking plastic garbage to stores full of phone accessories. It's known that these are all fronts, and somehow managed to survive the series of lockdowns. It's the big city alternative to cash-heavy biz like car washes or laundromats.
teddyh 5y ago
Maybe the rent increases have made these the only viable business models. EDIT: The business models I am referring to are “dubious trading, maybe even money laundering”, not “candy stores”.
- Tsiklon 5y ago
  I think you’re being overly generous. These shops are very very prevalent on Oxford Street, to the point of there being ten to twelve in the course of several hundred meters. They all have cheap signage, incredibly expensive stock and, other than tourists, very little footfall. They all look quite sketchy.
  - gilleain 5y ago
    Only one point is 'off' though: 1) "cheap signage" - so they are minimising costs? 2) "expensive stock" - maximising profits 3) "low footfall" - this does seem odd I still think that they get some deal on the rent, but they could also be dodgy at the same time. Would be nice if they were replaced by better shops.
    - dataengineer56 5y ago
      The way it works (generalising, read links for better info) is: 1. The landlord loses his long-standing tenant during lockdown because they can't afford rent anymore. 2. Instead of letting the shop go empty, the landlord creates their own separate sweet shop company and effectively pays rent to themselves. 3. Towards the end of the tax year, the shop is declared bankrupt. The landlord can take some tax benefits for having a failed tenant who can't pay the bills. 4. Typically the shop would have to auction everything they own (signage, shelves, tills, products) to claim back money, but no one wants to buy American sweets at a business auction. 5. The landlord puts the sweets into storage (they have long expiry dates and don't take up much space) and repeats the same trick next year.
  - teddyh 5y ago
    I meant “these” as in “dubious trading, maybe even money laundering”, not “candy stores”. Post edited to clarify.
mpalfrey 5y ago
Came here to make this exact comment. These are more than likely dodgy.
DrBazza 5y ago
It just feels like yet another murky chain of property ownership. How can these shops possibly sell enough candy to its target market of kids to pay the rent, when there are no kids on Oxford St.? Something from 'under the counter' instead? Or just a case of the "landlord" filling it until someone better comes along because Westminster City Council absolutely have to make Oxford St. look like it's busy and bustling as it's allegedly the UK's most popular shopping street? It would lose it's reputation if it looked like any other UK high street, that is to say, full of closed shops and nail bars. To be honest, it wasn't much different in the 80s and 90s. More major shops, but still lots of weird ones that had no right to exist on Oxford St. but were there nonetheless. In 2022, it's far more obvious.
- Freak_NL 5y ago
  The presumed target audience probably isn't children, it is mostly older teens and adult (British) tourists who may recognize American candy from social media and US films/series. But as others point out, that is likely just a front for money laundering.
  - DrBazza 5y ago
    I think that Westminster Council's needs and requirements on businesses and landlords on Oxford Street is probably underestimated though. But I agree, there's something really shady going here.
- bidirectional 5y ago
  Oxford St is full of kids, probably one of the main places they congregate in central London.
wdb 5y ago
Yes, I always wonder how many travel bags + souvenirs shops you need on street. On Queensway a pretty short street there are so many of these shops that it is getting ridiculous.

possiblelion 5y ago

I studied in London for two years out of by three year BA program (2018-2020), and due to COVID had to move back to Estonia to complete the last year remotely. Recently I visited London again to catch up with old friends and was really bamboozled by these "candy shops", they all had the distinct air of suspiciousness around them. I've never really liked Oxford Street however, even before the flood of US candy. Shopping malls are much better than high streets for actually buying things imho.

lozenge 5y ago
Bamboozled means the shops tricked you, maybe you mean you were befuddled (confused)?
dkdbejwi383 5y ago
Oxford Street would be a much nicer environment if it were closed to traffic from TCR to Marble Arch, perhaps with a thoroughfare for Regent Street. It's been proposed many times over the years, but Westminster council are against it. If the street were pedestrianised, and furnished with seating areas, landscaping, and perhaps some small cafe/restaurant units in the former roadway, it would be a much more pleasant environment to shop.
- petecooper 5y ago
  >TCR Tottenham Court Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Court_Road https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tottenham_Court_Road
- basisword 5y ago
  The large amount of traffic going through it has to go somewhere. On top of that, given the huge number of pedestrians on Oxford street I’d bet that with restaurants spilling out it would just become an even more awful place to walk through. Any of then streets that I saw pedestrianised during covid actually became worse. Between tables, cyclists, and crowds congregating getting through them became more difficult.
  - 5y ago

jzellis 5y ago

Money laundering on Oxford Street? Who could possibly be doing that? looks directly across Hyde Park at the big houses and luxury flats with appallingly tacky sports cars out front Oh, right.

maxehmookau 5y ago
It's not money laundering when it's rich people in mansions; it's tax evasion, which is what smart people do. /s
- verisimi 5y ago
  Not tax evasion, tax planning, you mean.

hnlmorg 5y ago

Up until earlier this year I spent a few years working just off Oxford Street. It's amazing how much that street has changed in such a short space of time. Definitely feels a lot shadier now than it used to. While I'm not a big fan of most forms of shopping, it still feels a great loss to see what it's now become.

alibarber 5y ago
I worked for nearly a decade in Soho and moved away (from London and the UK) just before the start of the pandemic and before these stores I can remember the famous headset-mic-wearing-perfume-salesmen throwing out boxes of perfume to totally-not-in-on-it-plants. It's always had that kinda crappy tourist trap sleezy vibe that you'd find in any other big city to me. That said Soho in general seems to have evolved with better restaurants, coffee shops, pubs, streetfood and smaller boutique shops whereas Oxford St didn't seem to read the writing on the wall when it came to the viability of large department stores selling things that people needed but could get elsewhere easier.
- iainmerrick 5y ago
  The section to the east of Oxford Circus has been like that for a long time. If the section to the west has gone the same way, that's a bit depressing (but as you say, not really surprising).
- dkdbejwi383 5y ago
  The department stores (Selfridges, mainly) are really the only reason to shop on Oxford St any more. The other high street shops can mostly be found in either of the Westfields, One New Change, Canary Wharf, Upper St, etc, where there's much less traffic and tourists. Or ordered online.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    I remember the original plan was for many bus routes to be removed from Oxford Street once Crossrail opened. Is that still the plan? I can't see any recent news on this.

deanc 5y ago

These stores have popped up in a lot of major European cities. You should avoid them like the plague - regardless of their background - they are a complete rip-off. Often 10-20x the price of a comparable store.

bidirectional 5y ago
You're exaggerating massively. They're expensive but 10-20x a comparable shop would imply they're charging £30+ for a chocolate bar.
- deanc 5y ago
  Maybe not for individual items, but usually they are set up not for a chocolate bar but rather these giant over-sized "pick-n-mix" style candy where you put many in your bag. The price per 100g is definitely inflated as much as I suggested
Pamar 5y ago
I noticed something similar in Prague (Summer 2020) - I am single and have no kids so I had no reason to visit one, but I did find odd that there was such a large number of shops selling just extra-sugary stuff. I am not 100% sure that we are talking of the same kind of shops, though. Here is what I mean: https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=candy&find_loc=Prague https://www.yelp.com/search?cflt=candy&find_loc=Prague
- lproven 5y ago
  Yeah, there are more than one type of such shop. I live in Prague. I am not Czech. I do go the Old Town, [1] because I like it, it's pretty, [2] when showing visitors around, and [3] because there are good places to eat and drink there. But in my experience, most Czechs never do. But there are tonnes of junk touristy shops that no local would ever dream of going to, Czech or otherwise. OTOH there are places like this: https://www.candy-store.cz/en/ https://www.candy-store.cz/en/ ... not in the Old Town, in the New (Prague 2), which are a useful resource for foodstuffs from faraway countries that we immigrant workers can't get anywhere else. And yes, for some of them, we will pay inflated prices, at least occasionally. So don't judge them all the same. Saying that, some of my visitors to the city _did_ want to go to the Chocolate Museum and other touristy places in the centre. :-)

jwmoz 5y ago

Should be illegal to have shops named "candy" instead of "sweets" in London.

vinay427 5y ago
It would seem rather silly and ironic for the British to adopt a prescriptive stance now. Candy has been used in English since about the 15th century, independent of the US. The same applies to many other differences in which the British more often chose to diverge while the US preserved the traditional term, such as “football” vs. “soccer”, etc. https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/2004/1028/p18s02-hfgn.html https://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/amphtml/2004/1028/p18s0...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
iamben 5y ago
I think this is a deliberate choice. The sweets are all American. As a Brit, hearing 'candy' makes me think of American sweets, hearing 'sweets' makes me think of rhubarb and custard.

matthew40 5y ago

What made the blood of that area has been gradually removed and killed by having musical venues closed (Denmark street for instance) to make room for Starbucks and Primarks, so it is no surprise that sooner or later, there would be a bill to pay, which is exactly this: a soul-less street.

bencollier49 5y ago
Agree totally with this. It's been exacerbated by the Crossrail work at Tottenham Court Road, which seems to have completely cut out the heart of the area - related to the issues at Denmark Street and elsewhere, like the Astoria.
- iNerdier 5y ago
  And covid finally killed it. There’s what, two remaining music related shops there?
thorin 5y ago
Denmark street was so good, cheap venues with quality bands like the 12 bar. Is it true that the music shops are moving out too. It was always on my must visit location when when I went to the West End.

Traster 5y ago

The real story here is that over the last 12 years of UK government, austerity policies have cut back all public services to the point where they don't actually exist. Criminal Barristers are currently on strike because the legal aid system is so broken. Close to 10% of the entire country are currently on an NHS waiting list, with that number expected to continue to rise until atleast 2024. Meanwhile, the tax burden in the UK has reached it's highest point in 70 years - putting us in a similar position to the 1950s where the UK was paying back the debts from WW2. The Home Office has just announced that after years of failing to stop immigrants from reaching the UK by boarding small boats to cross the channel, the government has entirely abandoned its responsbility to grant asylum to asylum seekers and instead will pay millions of pounds to have Rwanda do it for us (in order to deter the immigrants that we've failed to stop crossing the channel, because we can't stop them crossing the channel). Essentially we see this story repeatedly and the underlying question is "Why has no one actually investigated what seems to be an obviously illegal enterprise" and the answer is "Because we don't employ anyone to do that anymore".

dataengineer56 5y ago
---
- basisword 5y ago
  The government’s plan has faced objections from across the political spectrum. It’s widely accepted that it’s highly immoral. The people that agree with it are by far a minority.
  - Veen 5y ago
    It's unpopular with left-leaning journalists, lawyers, and politicians. Polls are mixed about whether it's popular with the general public, but that's what elections are for.
- Jaruzel 5y ago
  > In the plans, single men who arrive illegally in boats or lorries will be sent to Rwanda Which depending on which organisation you speak to, may or may not be legal: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61122241 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61122241 Personally, I'm embarrassed at how xenophobic and closed-minded my country has become.

Sholmesy 5y ago

I live in Soho, and have watched these places pop up & shut down on Oxford St constantly for the last 5 years. One factor is that in recent times these commercial rents have begun offering incredibly low rates for the first year, that then get increased in subsequent years. This makes it perfect for these low cost setups to move in, and move out constantly. I do think that there is an aspect of money laundering going on. I've literally never seen anyone in one of these stores, so yeah. Side Note: I got a weekly newsletter from Westminster council the other day, bragging about a raid they had done on some of those tourist trap places, and found £X amount of CBD products that weren't approved, non-sanctioned vapes/batteries etc. They also deported some undocumented people working there... These places are not the same as the candy places, but they are definately adjacent/similar setup.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
How much would it cost to keep a place like this running for a month? Rent + wages, assuming it needs just 1 full time staffer. Their stock doesn't go bad very fast at least, so if they do pack it in they can sell most of it on to someone else. That said, money laundering is pretty much everywhere; there's so many shops that don't really seem to get any business. Over here there's tons of phone shops, they sell phones, subscriptions (the provider is often plastered all over), phone cases and repairs, but I don't believe they get much traffic at all.
- op00to 5y ago
  Why do you think it money laundering? What’s the exact mechanism?
  - hoseja 5y ago
    Well, the usual scheme is you just report inflated sales, no?
    - op00to 5y ago
      I read a little further in the article and they mentioned that. Is it really that easy? I was hoping there was SOMETHING else besides just .. simple lying.

donthellbanme 5y ago

"all the goods are unpriced". I've run into this a lot lately. I'm in CA and I thought we had laws against no prices?

kergonath 5y ago
Yeah this does not really sound legal. Or if it is, it should not be.
- dane-pgp 5y ago
  Especially if the candy still has American prices in dollars visible on the packaging (which would be doubly confusing for tourists there).

te_chris 5y ago

These places are often on business-rates-only leases. For the landlord, they're a cheap way to keep costs low while they wait for a proper long-term tenant. For the tenant, well, cheap way to get a prime address to run a cash business, maybe....

otherotherchris 5y ago
Vacant property insurance can also be more expensive in certain locations as untenanted buildings tend to get quickly vandalized and have higher rates of arson. Easier to just put a popup retailer in it on a peppercorn rent.

aphrax 5y ago

When I lived in London it was the Aberdeen Angus Steak House [0], never any customers despite being on the main thoroughfairs.. [0] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/4813176/Who-goes-there.html https://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/4813176/Who-goes-th...

woleium 5y ago
Iirc that was discovered to be a laundry in the mid 00s?
iainmerrick 5y ago
I feel like I have seen plenty of tourists eating there (and always felt sorry for them). Rather than money laundering or anything shady like that, I always assumed it was just a fiendishly well-designed tourist trap. The branding is perfectly pitched to make it somehow look both classy and cheap (which are exactly the two things you want and need as a tourist in London).
thorin 5y ago
I went there with family in the 80s as a kid. They weren't that bad, but you have to remember the standard of dining in the 70/80s uk was pretty terrible at that point. There were lots of people there and not much choice. At this point McDonalds was a new and cool thing in the UK and it was many years before things like Weatherspoons came and brought cheap, low quality dining/drinking to the city masses. I remember at that time chains were seen as being quite cool and fancy and the choices were bad pubs full of old men that didn't allow children, fish and chips or breakfast places.

djhworld 5y ago

Pandemic might have accelerated the opening of these shops but tbh Oxford Street has been like this for years, although mostly those shops selling trinket souvenirs and other tat. Souvenir shops make sense for a city that attracts a lot of tourists, but when it's 5 shops all on the same street, it's a bit weird

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

I don't know, sometimes these things run in fads. We had two car parts stores in my town of ~20000 people for years. Then new ones started opening in disused storefronts, until we had 13. They all closed after a couple of years, except for the original two. Why? Maybe a magazine article about the best retail startup. Maybe a banker saw the numbers for such places were good and recruited folks. I don't know.

quattrofan 5y ago

drumhead 5y ago

Its likely that they're a front for money laundering. It used to be Souvenir shops until that scam was broken up by the police and HMRC. Before that it was the auctions scams and the closing down sales shops. These shops are probably being investigated now, in a year or so we'll probably see a major operation to take down the people behind it.

lizardactivist 5y ago

Could be money-laundering, could be something else. Whatever they are, they are no coincidence.

redeyedtreefrog 5y ago

Time Out did an investigation that suggests maybe they really are legitimate businesses making a profit, and not money laundering fronts as commonly suggested: https://www.timeout.com/london/shopping/why-is-central-london-suddenly-full-of-american-sweetshops https://www.timeout.com/london/shopping/why-is-central-londo... But I dunno, the sheer number still seems kinda sus.

raverbashing 5y ago
Funny, they probably got the one that is the most legitimate-ish of them and ran with it The whole article seems forced. But yeah the article is right in that it also works as a tourist trap