Photoclubalpha

Just saw this on Facebook.....

http://news.sky.com/story/1035613/jesso ... nistration

Awful news, no matter what you think of them as a company.

Looks like they are on their way out. They were not my favourite photo store by any means. In our nearest shops they tended to employ young people without the necessary knowledge or experience.
I do feel very sorry for the circa 2,000 poor people that their possible lack of foresight/bad organisation has put on the ever increasing unemployment list.

Pat

The announcement on their website today looks pretty final.

I liked the Edinburgh Shandwick Place Jessops although more so in the early years, I remember going to get the huge super-small-print pricelist quite often. It this carries on I will have to use the airport Dixons stores to look at new products.

Harvey

I know they took a lot of slagging off however how many of us have access to other specialist camera shops. I would now have to rely on Argos, Boots, Tesco, Asda etc. The only half decent shop here would be John Lewis.

The Internet is great for prices but you can't do the touchy feely thing with the new product. How many people bought an EOS xxx or A3x budget model and found it too small for their hands. Only handling in a shop or borrowing a mates camera gives you that. I once bought a Sigma 70-300 and found it zoomed the wrong way (compared to Minolta). I missed many shots as I instinctively zoomed the wrong way. I sold it pronto.

I'm lucky I can visit Wilkinson Cameras in Kendal when visiting family and buy stuff there which I have done on many occasions.

It's sad they are going whatever anyone says but their prices were a little steep even compared to other street outlets.

Mike

It's all over I'm afraid
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-2099 ... icRSS20-sa

I'm not entirely shocked though I expected maybe half the branches to shut and a slimmed down company to emerge. Seems Canikon called in the IOU's this time and that was that.
I was never a fan of their shops I think when the ceased to sell used equipment I lost a lot of interest (a bad move IMO)
My old Minolta dealer is still around, but as a Nikon dealer now..I can't imagine they sell tons of stuff probably tick over though

It was a shock to see the shops closed so soon. I was hoping they would be clearing stock at cheaper prices for a few days

Now there are NO camera shops near me, so I'll have to rely on Currys/PC World to feel a camera before ordering on-line. But there is nowhere for me to examine lenses and accessories, unfortunately.

At least I won't be tempted to spend for a while...

Headcell wrote: Now there are NO camera shops near me, so I'll have to rely on Currys/PC World to feel a camera before ordering on-line. But there is nowhere for me to examine lenses and accessories, unfortunately.
..

Most of us have the same problem. Sad.

HMV is in trouble again:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-21021073

This highlights a few issues (not just for camera shops but in general)
How relevant high street shops are with such a high degree of online purchases of various products be it music or photo stuff or anything else come to that
Secondly, clearly there are still a lot of problems with the UK economy (and in many regions worldwide) it is very weak, lots of money taken out of the consumer's pocket, increased VAT hurts business too.

Comet also went under not long ago, few years back Woolworths went bust. Combined that's a lot of jobs gone.
There is something of a snowball effect here (same in Eire) heavy cuts, increased taxes (esp indirect taxes) lower consumer spending = more pressure on struggling business. This probably won't be the last of it either. Many would argue Austerity is putting more people out of work and that a new approach is required.

I feel sorry for the staff more than anything else
I do like to see products (not just camera stuff) in retail outlets, but I admit I do buy things online more than I do in brick and mortar shops. The internet has no question hurt high street sales across a wide range of goods. Some have adapted to this (both physical and online presence) some have not.

Dragons' Den star Peter Jones has bought the brand of collapsed camera retailer Jessops to run it as an online company.
Rob Hunt, joint administrator and partner at PwC, said: "We can confirm that we have sold the brand and certain other assets to a number of buyers including entrepreneur Peter Jones CBE."
Jessops closed all 187 of its stores in earlier this month, but the deal is not thought to include any of them.
The camera retailer was forced to call in the administrators after talks with its lender and suppliers broke down following a poor Christmas.
It had struggled since 2007 after suffering from online competition and a boom in camera phones hitting demand for digital cameras.
Mr Jones, 46, was awarded his CBE in 2009.
He made his fortune after setting up the Phones International Group, which he sold a part of in 2011.
He has appeared on the BBC show Dragons' Den since it started in 2005.

The problem, at the moment, with the Peter Jones buyout, is that there is conflicting information about what his plans are for the brand. Some sources are saying he is only after the stock and brand name, and others that some stores may re-open. It would be nice to think that the latter would be the case, but until Mr Jones says "I'm in", I'll take it to be the former.

Peter Jones is quite interesting he's got my admiration for not giving up (he's had a number of heavy business failures before cocktail bar and computers to name 2) but didn't bow out and kept fighting on.

From what I gather it's going to be a purely online affair so we shall see what he does with that (even there competition is quite heavy)
I do still see a place for camera shops, but they have problems too. High overheads/rents/rates even just opening the doors is a costly affair for any high street shop, that's before you turn a profit of even one penny.

Same issue is hurting business in the UK/Eire cost of high street shop presence is too high for many to bear (hence the large number of empty shops in many high streets) so it's not exclusively down to "online" trade that is of course part of it.

I think the major error Jessops made was to stop doing second hand equipment. In today's economic climate (where people are being careful with expenditure) I see it as quite a strong market overall. I'd love to open up a camera shop if I had the resources to do it and have s/h equipment for sale.

I am glad they have made HMV and former Jessops CEO Trevor Moore redundant for too long we've had a climate of rewarding failure. Let's hope he never gets to head a company again, incompetent and with no sound business sense (Jessops were in trouble for a long time before this)

Barry

I was a huge fan of the secondhand shops and acquired many good items from Jessops, Mifsud and a local one in Kendal long closed.
Some real bargains to be had.

Mike

This is interesting!
http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2013/03 ... ra-reopen/

So he's opening some shops again but it's going to be a much smaller operation.

I was never impressed by local Jessop down here in Hampshire - very little promotion of Minolta or later Sony, lots of advertising and display put in for CanIkon, especially Canon. In fact their Sony display case was a farce, nearly always almost empty and with a few bits of a.n.other systems.

When their second hand displays vanished I lost most of any interest except for small stuff like lens cleaning bits, DSLR display protectors or Epson paper. I did buy a couple of Lowepro kit bags and a couple of Ansmann AA/AAA battery chargers. One of which is a rapid charger, another handles PP3 and the other has a useful discharge-recharge feature.

But then since the early 1980s I have built up a good relationship with another, but smaller, national chain in a shop which was once Fareham Cameras now a branch of LCE. I purchased most big ticket items from them, although I did use Mifsud for mail order when I needed something out of the usual quickly e.g. a Metz Minolta/Sony Alpha compatible dual flash the 54MZ-4i with SCA-3302 base. This was before David put up a review of this unit here http://www.photoclubalpha.com/2007/06/1 ... pha-dslrs/. I have to agree about the poor user interface and clunky stand but when its foibles are mastered it is a useful addition to the pair of Minolta 5600 HSD guns.

I have yet to see how these units work with (wireless) and on the A77 when it arrives.

LCE Fareham for awhile had a Sony shop right next door and I did pay a visit to see how knowledgeable they were about Sony's camera range - not very was the answer, being hotter on audio-video.