It's my understanding some suppliers had during last year offered credit to them to enable their products to be sold as it was the #1 high street outlet for their goods.
Jessops was the first chain in the UK I established a relationship with as a consumer, a place where at the time you could get all manner of advice connected with photography, the virtues of different lenses, filters, film etc over the sales counter.
My local branch would root out stuff for me to try instore without obligation. They also run a photography residential school with industry experts providing tuition.
Two things probably did for this type of retailing, the first being digital photography has less repeat custom after buying a camera and maybe a spare memory card and for Dslr users an additional lens or two. You sure wouldn't be buying a new memory card each week in the way you bought film and although they'd invested in instore printing, a lot of casual users either print at home or don't even print their images so you wouldn't be getting much of an income stream from that!
As a traditional film slr user I saw reductions traditional products in stock to the point while on vacation I couldn't get medium speed print film and ended up visiting a well known drugstore that had better stocks off the shelf!
Also many users use smartphones as cameras leading to a drop in demand for digital compacts that come on contracts while professionals users would use online stores that held larger 'to go' supplies with rapid delivery
Last week, he said trying desperately not to come over all smug, it's finally happened, music retailing has moved from the high street. Poor ol' Nipper.
Well okay, I know that's Birmingham Bull Ring, not Broad Street, but you know what I mean -our town and city centres - with the shock announcement late last night (January 14th) the national music and video retailer HMV was planning on going into administration following poor Christmas sales.
Sounds familiar, eh? And rather like with Jessops they also were being bankrolled by the suppliers who provided much of the January 25% off "Blue Cross" sales stock as did two state owned banks who to put things with my usually matter of factness, want their money back.
Some other similarities include high rents, failure to capitalize on online sales, poor in store stocks (I mean just seven studio albums by the Stones in the branch in a large city branch near me???), uncompetitive online store pricing (Amazon often cheaper).
HMV potentially could of gotten into downloading but after a brief messy store attempt, partnered up with 7Digital who run that for them which would be fine except 7Digital are a big brand in their own right so most would of gone straight to them.
As much as I feel for for all the staff I'm expecting nearly all the branches to go simply because it seems to me you can't run a big chain anymore because of the overheads and also your immediate best sellers, new albums, are stocked by both supermarkets such as ASDA and Tesco cheaply and the likes of Amazon for those who want cds but many more prefer to download and these can obtained cheaply from the big three Amazon, iTunes and 7Digital.
You can do niche cd selling from a small side street location with an internet presence backed by a warehouse.
Hmv failed also to capitalize on the "Vinyl revival" by stocking few new and re-issue titles that many who like a physical album buy which was the tipping point for me becoming fed up of having to order run of the mill cd titles only to return later at my expense to collect, getting an account at Amazon ordering from them. I guess I wasn't alone in that!
I get the nostalgia many are feeling, remembering the first time I visited HMV Oxford Street London and the Manchester store still having those records and the many BritPop vinyl titles on 7" and 12" lp I bought new that are most collectible.
I just feel by years end the high street will be that much the poorer.
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