Jessops to go into administration?

[Ian]

Jessops, the UK's last national chain of photography stores, is reportedly about to enter into administration. A formal announcement is expected later this afternoon.

Read the full story...

[JSR]

[Ian]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

PricewaterhouseCoopers has been appointed as administrators for Jessops. The aim is to keep the company going in a profitable form but store closures are inevitable.

Someone will have to eventually buy the company and any remaining assets in order for the company to have any chance of a long term future. It didn't work for Comet and, sadly, I don't think Jessops has much more of a chance than they did.

Ian

[peter]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

Sad as I know people who work in our local store we only have two camera shops over here and now this could very soon be down to one. I use them often because we have a deal with them which gives us good discounts. We being the local camera club I am also in.

Off topic but I see today that play.com will close in March as well.

[Ian]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

On reflection, shops are a relatively recent thing (I don't think shops as we know them now existed more than 200 odd years ago).

Instead we had markets and still do of course.

I wonder if small high street stores have a future at all?

Ian

[John Perriment]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

The thought of losing such a famous and iconic name from the high street is very sad, but I'm not surprised. Last time I visited the local store was to enquire about an Olympus MFT lens, which they didn't have. The salesman then told me that Olympus was a bad choice and attempted to sell me a NEX. It's all part of the modern, arrogant attitude of retailing where what the customer wants is ignored in favour of pushing what the store wants to sell. Add to that the appalling lack of knowledge and bad advice regularly given by some (not all) Jessops staff and it becomes obvious that this was an accident waiting to happen.

Locally, I suppose, this is good news for Cameraworld in Chelmsford. Despite an unhappy experience trying to buy a particular camera from them last year, I have to say the service they provide, including product knowledge and good, unbiased advice, is light years ahead of Jessops.

[JSR]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

I wonder if small high street stores have a future at all?

They would do if it wasn't made so expensive for them to be in the high street, what with escalating business rates, increasing insurance rates, and increasing rents.

How is the High Street supposed to compete with internet trade when local councils push business rates through the roof?

There's this impression that "business" means "loads of money, so we want our pound of flesh" when, back in the real world, to many the word "business" means "struggling on and barely avoiding bankruptcy".

That said, there's no excuse for the likes of Jessops charging almost double the RRP of a product. This kind of abject disrespect for their customers is a blatant insult to common sense and they deserve to lose that custom. I don't mind paying a little more to a High Street store, but I'm not into paying double for anything just to keep their profits high.

[Ian]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

Apparently, Jessops had a very poor Christmas - a time when it would usually expect to make the bulk of its annual sales. And on top of that the projection for 2013 was pretty dire. I guess that meant that losses would continue and worsen and so the company had no choice but to go into administration.

Ian

[Pol]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

... It's all part of the modern, arrogant attitude of retailing where what the customer wants is ignored in favour of pushing what the store wants to sell. Add to that the appalling lack of knowledge and bad advice regularly given by some (not all) Jessops staff and it becomes obvious that this was an accident waiting to happen.

That sounds typical of our local Jessops. I went there a few years ago looking for a 'Bigma' for my Pentax. Some daffy assistant tried to sell me one with a Canon fit telling me I'd "just need a little adaptor" and that they'd "order it for me so I could collect it from the shop".

I had to get out of there pronto as I couldn't stop laughing. I've never been back since.


Pol

[John Perriment]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

That sounds typical of our local Jessops. I went there a few years ago looking for a 'Bigma' for my Pentax. Some daffy assistant tried to sell me one with a Canon fit telling me I'd "just need a little adaptor" and that they'd "order it for me so I could collect it from the shop".

I had to get out of there pronto as I couldn't stop laughing. I've never been back since.


Pol

It would have been fun to let him order the adapter and tell him you'd buy the lens when the adapter was available for collection. Then, when you returned, you could have asked him to demonstrate how the combination worked before you bought it. I would have paid good money to watch that!

[Pol]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

It would have been fun to let him order the adapter and tell him you'd buy the lens when the adapter was available for collection. Then, when you returned, you could have asked him to demonstrate how the combination worked before you bought it. I would have paid good money to watch that!

It was a daffy young female, though she did ask a daffy young fella if they had any Canon adaptors for Pentax cameras and he'd told her they could order one for me.

I was incredulous! Fell about laughing leaving David looking embarrassed at the counter. He followed me out of the shop soon after and told me off for embarrassing him in public!

There was another camera shop at the other end of the town. That one was sold and taken over a few years ago. The new owner converted it into a digital camera shop with DIY printing facilities. He was even more stupid! I was in there one time wanting a flash card as I'd run out and wanted another one there and then. He told me 'just print them on the machine over there then your card will be "clean" again.

I told him I preferred to process my own photos in Photoshop and he asked "where's Photoshop? Is that one of the new places that's opened up in the new precinct?"

Pol

[Pops]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

You do find them Pol

[Patrick]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

They would do if it wasn't made so expensive for them to be in the high street, what with escalating business rates, increasing insurance rates, and increasing rents.

How is the High Street supposed to compete with internet trade when local councils push business rates through the roof?

There's this impression that "business" means "loads of money, so we want our pound of flesh" when, back in the real world, to many the word "business" means "struggling on and barely avoiding bankruptcy".

That said, there's no excuse for the likes of Jessops charging almost double the RRP of a product. This kind of abject disrespect for their customers is a blatant insult to common sense and they deserve to lose that custom. I don't mind paying a little more to a High Street store, but I'm not into paying double for anything just to keep their profits high.

[Ray Shotter]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

I am aware that in recent years when I visited our local Jessops shops in Lowestoft and Norwich that too often their prices were uncompetetive with many online retailers. Nevertheless, their staff were always well informed about their own stock and their features and usually genuinely apologetic about the models and brands which they were no longer stocking.

I don't know what happened some years ago when they decided to abandon their trade-in and second hand service but, I for one, certainly used it extensively when buying lenses for my Nikon FM2n. The service was excellent. I would search for a particular lens on-line and they would send it from Northern Ireland (or wherever it was located) and let me know when it was instore for viewing in Norwich. Then depending on whether the lens was as described I would decide whether or not to buy it. On one occasion the young man serving me took one look at the lens before I had the chance to look at it and apologised for the fact that there was signs of fungus and promptly suggested another which he had noticed (not in the Norwich store) but in Leeds (I think it was).

Also, when I decided to dip into the digital camera realm, I used Jessops on-line service to find a secondhand Olympus C8080WZ which I still have. More recently, a few months ago, I ordered a Manfrotto 732CY carbon fibre tripod on-line requesting that I should pick it up in the Lowestoft store. The price was comptetetive and so, after trying it out in store, I bought it.

I am sorry to read that so many of you appear to have been served by such poorly trained staff - I can only report that my experience of Jessops staff in Norwich and Lowestoft not only know their stuff but always went out of their way to find me what I wanted whenever I visited their stores.

The demise of the secondhand service was a great loss for me personally since it was my best source of lenses. (e-bay is nothing like as good !!) I still spend too much time on-line perusing secondhand lenses from those retailers who still provide this service but regret that I can't see and handle the lenses before purchase. However, most of them are happy to have unwanted items returned. Once again it is a sad day for Jessops staff and I will miss our local Jessops shops - Jessops is the only camera shop in Lowestoft. ( I don't count Currys/PCWorld as a genuine camera shop).

Ray.

[John Perriment]

Re: Jessops to go into administration?

I have bought a fair amount of gear online, it must be said, but mainly secondhand from ebay and forums. When I'm able to buy new it's usually from a local camera shop. OK, I have only bought two new cameras from my local in the last 5 years, but there would have been a third had they not messed me about quite as much. However, this is Cameraworld I'm talking about, where the advice and service is usually excellent. Jessops, sadly, became irrelevant to me many years ago.