Thread: Jessops closed all shops tonight!! Loss of 1400 jobs!

Very very sad!! All shops are closing tonight (11/01/2013) and stock is being sent to a central warehouse where it will be returned to the suppliers (as much as poss ). Will be interesting to see if they pop up as an internet only business.

Sign of the times...

All of our local empty storefronts seem to be filling up with nail salons and 30 minute workout gyms... how many could we possibly need???

The few Jessops I passed regularly in recent months seemed to have ever decreasing stocks of anything anyway - the window displays were non-existent for instance, so with hindsight one could perhaps have seen it coming.

I've seen comments on various online forums about this, and while it's often expressed as a terrible blow for the employees (which it is), I've not seen a single comment that suggests anyone will miss the shops themselves

Bummer for the folks that were working there. Hopefully, they'll land other jobs quickly.

Armando unfortunately this country is not in much shape for 1400 people to pick up jobs too easily

That's not good. Our unemployment rate here in the US is higher than it has been since 2009. But there are still jobs if people are willing to work not necessarily doing what they used to do. Unfortunately for brick and mortar stores, online stores is just much more convenient and often cheaper than real stores.

I also wondered if they could continue as an internet based business but they've already been bailed out once before and I can't see anyone being very keen to back them again.

I am sorry to see any company go under, particularly for the employees - but in the case of Jessops it is not a surprise.

I can remember when my nearest large town - Guildford - had four separate camera shops - Jessops, Techno, London Camera Exchange and Reids. Each offered cameras and lenses, but their service and approach differed widely. Reids was the first to go, swallowed up by Photo Optix who themselves went the way of the Dodo some time ago. Techno didn't last much longer - but both of them were pre-digital era and succumbed to trading conditions in general.

Jessops at the same time were expanding aggressively and pricing and buying every competitor out of business. The small independents like Reids either had to have something very special - location in a small town or a strong and loyal customer base - to survive. Jessops invested in bricks and mortar stores, sometimes more than one in a town due to acquisition, and were completely wrong-footed by first the democratisation of photography through digital then the shift to online retail. They found themselves with thousands of feet of retail space that they could not get out of quickly enough.

Their other big error, in my view, was to move out of the secondhand market. The ability to trade in brought people into the stores and the ability to pick up a secondhand bargain with a store warranty did likewise. When they shifted to new only I stopped going in and I suspect I was not alone.

So, back to my example of Guildford. With Jessops gone, the one remaining specialist photographic shop is London Camera Exchange - an old fashioned new and secondhand customer service driven store that is seldom less than really busy every Saturday.

C'est la vie...


Sent from another Galaxy

All the initial news reports kept saying "The UK's only specialist camera chain" and I kept thinking "What about LCE?".
They appear to be thriving, and I hope they continue to do so. Interesting that they have minimal online presence, and seem to rely on physical footfall ... perhaps they are simply better managed than Jessops (or have less debt, or are still privately owned rather than by banks ... )

Sad to see this happen.

I know Wolf/Ritz just did a huge downsizing. Its just so hard to sell electronics these days out of a B&M store when its hard to compete with the buying power of a company like B&H. I would love for a company like B&H to start expanding and putting in small stores around the country so we enthusiasts can actually go out and touch the cameras before we buy. I'm so reluctant to buy a camera because I want to play with it in a store before I buy and know it will fit my hands and uses. Losing stores like Jessops really hurts customers like me.