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...
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