Stretching just over a mile east from Marble Arch, London’s Oxford Street has long been one of the city’s premier shopping destinations. It remains one of Europe’s busiest shopping streets and, as recently as 2018, could command rents of more than ￡1,000 per square foot, among the most expensive in Europe.
But since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Oxford Street has become barely recognisable. Footfall has declined almost 60 per cent compared with 2019, according to a study by Mytraffic and Cushman & Wakefield. New commercial buildings — comprising tens of thousands of square feet of empty retail space — alternate with tatty souvenir stores and shuttered storefronts.
The biggest change has been the rapid influx of brightly lit shops selling colourful American sweets, from Jawbreakers to Jolly Ranchers and Sour Patch Kids. Many have sprung up in place of the high-street retailers that were hard hit by Covid-19 and the shift to online shopping. The number of sweet shops soared during the pandemic. Along with souvenir shops, there are now about 30 of them — the second most common business category on Oxford Street after fashion stores, according to the Local Data Company.