Toast - C&A's UK Stores

Sliced Bread

BBC

Health & Fitness

4.6 • 695 Ratings

🗓️ 18 December 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The fashion chain C&A continues to thrive elsewhere so why did it shut all its UK stores?

The BBC Business journalist, Sean Farrington, investigates how they ended up toast, in the company of resident business expert and entrepreneur, Sam White.

C&A used to be one of the biggest fashion retailers on the UK's high streets until a shock decision in 2000 led to the stores' sudden closure.

To help explain what happened, Sean and Sam delve into the BBC archives and hear from expert guests including Donna Bevan - fashion historian, lecturer and course leader at the School of Creative Industries at Southampton Solent University and Stephen McDermott who worked at C&A for 35 years.

Produced by Jon Douglas, Toast is a BBC Audio North production for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds.

If you have a good idea for an interesting Toast topic then tell us about it - email toast@bbc.co.uk

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:07.0	My Christmas Mix is pure 90s festive nostalgia.
0:11.1	You know, the Christmas songs you listen to on repeat.
0:14.0	Ho!
0:14.3	Ho! Ho! No, no, no.
0:17.5	I'm all about the big hitting Christmas anthems.
0:20.4	Come on, guys. What about those tunes that really slay?
0:23.7	It's Christmas Kitchen Disno season, surely.
0:26.4	Give me hip-hip-christmas bangers every day.
0:28.6	Those Christmas tracks that are straight out of lapland.
0:30.9	Get all kinds of Christmassy.
0:32.6	Just search Christmas music on BBC Sounds.
0:37.6	Hello, welcome to Toast, the BBC Radio 4 series, which celebrates amazing businesses and brands that once offered a lot to customers, but still ended up Toast.
0:48.9	I'm the BBC business journalist Sean Farrington, sidekick, more than the sidekick, entrepreneurial guru,
0:54.8	Sam White beside me as well, resident business experts. We keep Sam in the dark about what's coming
1:00.6	up. So her response is the real deal. Her conclusions at the end are based on what she's just heard.
1:06.8	And this time we're pondering the fortunes of a pioneering fashion retailer
1:11.7	still operating in well over a dozen countries,
1:15.3	so why did we lose it from the UK?
1:20.2	Sam, hello.
1:21.7	Hey.
1:22.5	Fashion retail chains.
	...

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