Catherine Shuttleworth from Savvy Marketing said River Island’s challenges were “significant” but they were shared by the wider retail industry.
She believed the fashion chain had been affected by several factors including having its stores in the wrong place and facing rising costs.
“River Island has maintained an expensive portfolio of stores at a time when costs are rising and footfall is falling,” she told the BBC.
“Many older stores find themselves in parts of town which may have been busy 20 years ago but now find themselves on the periphery.”
Known for affordable and stylish fashion, brands such as River Island and Topshop dominated High Street fashion from the early 2000s to the mid 2010s.
The first River Island store opened in 1988, after being originally founded in 1948 under the Lewis and Chelsea Girl brand before being renamed.
The family-owned retailer currently has 230 shops, employs about 5,500 people and was one of the first big UK High Street names to launch online in the late 1990s.
But recent years have proved tough. Ben Lewis, chief executive of River Island, said last month that a sharp rise in “the cost of doing business” over the past few years had “only added to the financial burden”.
Intense competition in fashion retail, not only from the likes of Boohoo, but also from Chinese giants such as Shein and Temu, have also added to its challenges.
Its most recent set of accounts revealed a £33.2m loss, with sales down 19%.