Bradford's missing retailers

There's a shortfall of multiple retailers in Bradford.  There is no department store and thousands of people leave the city to shop elsewhere, for places that do offer those retailers.  It is no surprise that Bradford lacks retailers found in Manchester and Leeds, these are among the top ten centres nationally.  It is worth comparing Bradford to other towns and cities that have big neighbouring centres to compare with.

Huddersfield and Wakefield are arguably ahead of Bradford now as retail centres in West Yorkshire, so they are worth a comparison.  Bolton is a similar distance from Manchester to Bradford is from Leeds, but performs relatively well as a shopping centre.  Derby is a smaller city than Bradford, and whilst it has a shiny new shopping centre (built by Westfield!) it still has to compete with Nottingham down the road.

Research by the Bradford Property Forum asked young people about retailers missing from the city centre.  Whilst there are many vacant units in the centre, some of them will not meet the requirements of national retailers and retailers will not be willing to commit to the city when there is no certainty about Westfield getting developed.

	Bradford	Wakefield	Huddersfield	Bolton	Derby
Accessorize	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
All Saints	No	No	No	No	Yes
BHS	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Debenhams	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Gap	No	No	No	No	No
H&M	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
House of Fraser	No	No	Yes	No	No
Lush	No	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Monsoon	No	No	Yes	No	Yes
Republic	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Schuh	No	No	No	No	Yes
Superdry	No	No	No	No	Yes
Zara	No	No	No	Yes	Yes

Whilst some of those retailers may not have a strong presence across the other four towns, it is noted that retailers such as Schuh and Superdry were located in those sexy shopping hotspots of Wigan and Bury respectively.  Bury and Wigan have both had new retail space developed in the last five years, Wakefield have had a new mall open in the last year and Huddersfield saw its most recent shopping centre development a decade ago.