BOOTLEG tobacco and alcohol is costing Bolton's corner shops and convenience stores more than £500 a week each, according to new research.
Estimates from the survey, carried out with more than 500 retailers for trade magazine Independent Retail News, show that over a 12-month period, the average retailer lost £28,472 through smuggling.
Crucially, shopkeepers are also losing out on other sales because many customers are no longer buying their cigarettes from their local store. Nearly half of retailers (48 per cent) said regular customers were no longer buying cigarettes from them with nearly 27 per cent saying those customers only "sometimes" or 11 per cent "rarely" used their store at all.
The survey estimates that bootlegging cost the independent retail trade £1.2 billion in the last year which brings the six-year total to more than £11 billion since Independent Retail News first carried out research in 1998.
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