Fancy dress shop Diss-Guise will be holding a closing down sale when it closes its doors for the final time at the end of this month.
Adam Richards, who first opened the shop in November 2015, hoped he had cornered the local fancy dress market thanks to the shop’s unique catchment area as it straddled the Norfolk and Suffolk border.
Unfortunately, the business has not taken off and, as his three-year-lease comes to an end, he is choosing to move on to pursue other interests.
Adam will be selling off all his remaining costumes for between £5 and £20. There are hundreds of outfits available, including superheroes, uniforms, comic book characters, wedding dresses, vintage clothing and an assortment of accessories.
“I’ve put too much money into [the business] but it hasn’t been popular enough,” he said. “I think a major factor is that people [would] rather sit at home and press a button instead of browsing at a shop.”
“I hoped there would be enough interest locally to keep the shop going, but, whether people just aren’t interested in fancy dress any more or it is just the decline of the high street, I don’t know,” he said.
“If people do still like fancy dress, they are just going online,” he continued. “Ultimately, I think people have just lost the art of browsing around shops like they used to.”
