The chairman of discount chain One Beyond has blamed last year’s budget for the business putting the brakes on plans to open more stores.
Chris Edwards Sr, who founded One Beyond with his son Chris Edwards Jr in 2019, said the business was forced to halt expansion after calculating the costs of budget measures were greater than its net £1.5m profit in the previous financial year.
One Beyond had been aiming to have 150 stores by November last year but now has 118, only three more than at the start of 2024.
“The year before [the budget] we’d made a small profit but were establishing business,” Edwards Sr told The Grocer.
“We worked out it was going to put an extra £1.8m costs on the business.”
He said One Beyond had “stopped opening shops completely” after Chancellor Rachel Reeves announced increases in both the minimum wage and employers’ National Insurance payments from April 2025.
The BRC put the cost to retail at £5bn, made up of £2.3bn in changes to employers’ National Insurance payments and £2.7bn from the national living wage increase.
“We didn’t want to take on any more expense knowing this government might introduce anything at any time,” said Edwards.
One Beyond opened 20 stores in the year to 31 January 2024, according to its latest accounts at Companies House, taking the estate to 115 at the end of the period. Turnover increased by 22% to £126m and the monthly average number of employees grew by 24% to 1,600.
The chain started life as One Below, selling everything for £1 or less, and rebranded as One Beyond in 2022 after introducing higher price points.
Edwards Sr – who also founded Poundworld as a market stall in 1974 and built it into a 250-store chain before selling for £150m in 2014 – added: “We’ve put everything on hold and we’re now just taking a view of whether we should or shouldn’t start opening stores again.”
He said One Beyond was “monitoring” Poundland store closures for opportunities. “Whether we end up with any of their shops is another matter,” he added. “If a shop comes up, we’ve really got to make sure it’s within our spend.”
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