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HMV, Blockbuster .....
...... problems with the banks ....... I am so pleased the coalition is on track.Come July when there is not a single large retailer left in our shopping centers and unemployment has risen - but not according to the revised method of counting the figures - I shall raise a glass to the hero's who saved our economy and our great nation.
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...and how about the retailers that started this downward trend in the High Street pre May 2010...
Woolworths (2009) (28,000 jobs lost)
Littlewoods (2006)
MFI (2008)
Courts (2004)
Borders and Books (2009)
Zavvi (2009)
Dolcis Shoes (2008)
and others....
Stop waving the red flag and post something that has some substance rather than blaming of others,
When I was my son's age I'd spend several hours a week in such places. My son probably spends minutes a year in them and rarely buys anything.
He orders stuff online - as he says, it's easier and he's guaranteed to
a) find what he's looking for and
b) 9 times out of 10 find it cheaper.
Can you find work then for the thousands of people who are joining the umemployed? i suspect you also think that unemployed people are lazy and should have their benefit stopped, its not the companies its the staff who suffer, the companies have made their money they dont care.
The problems of all three companies in the last couple of weeks having nothing to do with the current coalition and everything to do with failures of their own management
HMV has been saddled with debt obligations for years and struggled while losing market share. it really has no excuse as it's largest high street competitor closed down years ago - due to a failure to have an alternative insurance supplier
Jessops had failed to anticipate and react to the rise of camera phones, online printing services.
Blockbusters failed to react to the rise of online downloads and by the time it did - it was too late.
Comet also has had problems for years and was asset stripped by the turnaround company - indeed there have been questions raised over the fees paid from comet to it.
Nothing to do with the coalition.
This. A few years back I was a nutter for buying CDs and DVDs but with the advent of services like Spotify and Netflix I have a collection greater than I could ever buy, available wherever my tech and I are located and only a mouse click away.
Not a good time to be selling physically what can be brought electronically.
Indeed. The likes of HMV and Blockbuster just didn't adapt enough to reflect current trends of online consumption of media. Obviously it very sad about the job losses. However, the reality is the days were numbered of these business models. Just not enough customers who like to browse and buy/rent physical media (and pay more for the privilege) to be sustainable any more.
I don't think you can blame the banks in this case. Why should they be lending money to outdated companies who cannot make a profit? Giving money to people would couldn't pay it back is one of the reasons the banks got into a mess in the first place.
I agree that it's been extremely difficult for the likes of HMV and Jessops to compete with the online market for the same product at a cheaper price. But it does not let the coalition Gov, nor the previous labour administration, off the hook either. Pay freezes, pay cuts, and redundancies began in the last labour administration. These continue with the current coalition Gov. The effect is that people have less disposable income whilst the cost of essentials such as food, domestic fuel & travel rise, and therefore people source cheaper suppliers of whatever "luxury" it is they want. The effect of that is the likes of HMV and Jessops collapse.
Comet is a similar story. People haven't got the money anymore to be splashing out to support all the big electrical goods retailers. Curry's/Dixons already merged to keep their head afloat. Comet turned out to be the weakest link, and was squeezed out of the market.
Factor in banks unwilling to lend or extend credit to businesses because of their own financial predicament, and you can see that there's a whole lot more to it than simply just having the idea that certain retailers didn't keep up with the market and they've gone bust becaue of it.
They actually have got the money. It's not doom and gloom for everybody, contrary to popular belief. People just won't spend over the odds when they see the item they want cheaper online.
I lost all sympathy for the board room level of shops when they decided to wade into the last election basically saying the country needed a tory goverment.
loads of bigname firms deemed that was the best option and it was used in great effect by the media and the Tories
But do the people on these boards make a loss or do they just move on to the next company to ruin taking their spoils with them?
I don't think the whole thing can be pinned on the government. But individual business entities are not entirely responsible either. Successive gov policies have also played their part, in particular, the current ecomomic climate is the product of Government policy. The knock-on effect is consumers being more thrifty with money, or even not spending it at all unless necessary.
Local councils also need to share some of the blame for making town centres such a difficult place to do business. Planning restrictions, poor public transport and expensive parking have all made life difficult for High Street operators.
I entirely agree.
Specialist camera shops are struggling because of smart phones and cheaper online retailers, HMV has gone bust because of cheaper online music and to some extent piracy, blockbuster has gone bust because of cheaper more convenient online versions of their business model and file sharing.
This wiil be happening in every country in the world....
So you're saying governments influence where I choose to shop? You could double my disposable income and HMV, Jessops and Blockbuster wouldn't see any more of me than they have at any other time in the past 5 years (which was hardly ever).
The three should have amalgamated years ago and operated under one roof. United they might have stood a chance. As standalone business models they were dinosaurs waiting for the inevitable. Gloucester had 2 Blockbusters until recently. There was barely enough interest to support one. The days where you'd see a queue of people clutching a copy of the latest release are long gone. Broadband and smart tvs killed it. It meant having to stock more copies of new releases to make sure people at least stood half a chance of getting what they wanted which meant fewer titles in total to choose from - assuming of course you could be bothered to drive/walk/whatever to the shop in the first place when you've just ordered your Dominoes pizza to be delivered.
Great for people like me who might be prepared to wait until they are looking to offload those excess copies on the cheap at some point down the line - especially if you're not bothered about bonus discs and all that added extra nonsense and simply want a copy of the theatrical release (with a 6 month warranty so's reservations about the quality of a secondhand DVD aren't an issue) but not much of a business for them.
It depends. If a board director has anything invested in the company going under, then they might lose their investment. Generally they're treated the same as employees though unless some sort of malpractice on their part that is significant in the company going bust is proven, in which case they can be struck off and not allowed to be director (or involved at any similar level) of another company for between 2 to 15 years.
Littlewoods made a loss every year of its existence (kept afloat by profits from the pools), so I think they can be discarded
ok not the latest releases but get them from HMV Blockbuster for what price £ ?
or poundland have them DVD CD £1
Zoverstocks etc recent stuff £1.26 delivered
Markets bric a bac car boot etc. my local markets has loads of stalls DVD CD are £1
Cash converters etc has loads of DVD CD 69p-£1
a no brainer
I fail to see how you can blame the government for the failings at board level of a private company at all.
The HMV board, for example, were told 10 years ago that the future of their business was likely to move towards the Internet and they point-blank refused to even consider the notion, that is hardly the government's fault.
The same with Blockbuster, they failed completely to react to the online services offered by the likes of Lovefilm and Netflix where as, like HMV, they could have been global leaders in the new technology.
LOL. You really should get a job with Labour central command unless of course you already have.
The respective film and music industries didn't exactly help. They don't release the movies when we, the public have the appetite to see them. The prices vary to much - not everybody wants a three format bluray,dvd. digital, copy and hours of behind the scenes bumf and a dozen bloody trailers and adverts to bypass to get to the film - they just want the theatrical release at a reasonable and consistent price.
By the time Blockbusters get a copy of a decent movie most people have already seen it (by fair means or foul) and there simply aren't enough good movies out there to fill the gaps when there is sufficient interest in a single title.
The Games industry are also making mistakes. Some newer titles have online codes designed to make people buy more new titles and less second hand ones. By doing that they've forgotten that a lot of kids will pay £40-£50 for a new game knowing they can trade it for the next new title. Remove that option and they'll
a) have to find the full price for every title they are interested in
and
b) naturally become more selective and buy less because you've just halved their disposable gaming income.
Blockbuster used to do quite a bit of trade in the second hand games markets. Since those bigger gaming houses started doing this I've heard lots of comments about the drop in half decent 2nd hand titles filtering back into the system through places like Blockbuster.