Is it the beginning of the end for HMV?

[Dr Lobster*]

over christmas i went into hmv to spend some of my pocket money and there was bugger all in store and what was there was massively overpriced - dvds which cost £3-4 on play.com are £15 quid in hmv. with box sets especially what they charge over amazon and play is frankly criminal and it looks that more and more people have come to the same conclusion.

but the whole experience of the store is depressing, it usually stinks of BO and our store illogically laid out.

but with news of the stores' poor christmas results and now news that their suppliers can't get credit insurance, is it the end of hmv and they're destined to go the way of zavvi/woolworths?

[Gavin Scott]

Surprised they're still trading to be honest. If they weren't able to capture the market after Virgin/Zavvi wernt south, then there's obviously no market left.

That said, I like shops for the simple fact that you can walk in, pick up your desired piece of merchandise and take it home. The common acceptance of ordering online then waiting for the post seems, well, a bit of a step backwards.

There's obvious advantages to shopping from the comfort of your home and gaining keen prices, but what ever happened to instant gratification?

TELL ME IMMEDIATELY.

[Philip]

I wouldn't rule out Blu-ray. You are hardly going to get Blu-ray quality streaming online via iPlayer or the like in the near future.

[Sput]

Well you DO get pretty decent 720p streaming off it now, and you get it through blu-ray players!

I'm astounded they're struggling, given how many people are in there at the weekends. That said, I can't QUITE see the point of them having two massive branches VERY close together in Manchester city centre.

As for their markup: absolutely dreadful prices but ONLY in the shop. HMV.com has prices comparable to amazon etc. This really pissed me off when I looked on their site, saw they had arrested development for £6, popped to the shop and discovered it was still full price.

[dosxuk]

I don't think it's the end of the HMV name, but it could well be the end of their high street presense. It's still quite a strong brand, and I could see them concentrate on the web side.

[scottishtv]

When the post wasn't reliable just before Christmas, I went to a smaller HMV for the first time in ages - to buy a CD as a present. I was surprised by the place and how dated and confused the store appeared.

There were much fewer CDs stocked than I would have thought. They didn't have what I was looking for, and what they did have were really expensive. The front of the shop was all comedy DVDs and box sets, and a huge chunk dedicated to games consoles, calendars and posters.

Seems the confused approach is just that. Confused, as in June last year they reported:
HMV sees sales and profits soar

Yet just a couple of weeks ago (six months later):
HMV to close 60 stores as sales and shares slump

[Gavin Scott]

I wouldn't rule out Blu-ray. You are hardly going to get Blu-ray quality streaming online via iPlayer or the like in the near future.

I've yet to see a Blu-ray BUT I have bought a player from a pal and will get it soon. Yayeth.

I imagine its a richer experience than streaming 1080i movies from Virgin - but even so I'm happy with the quality of the latter - but currently their prices are ludicrously high. Why should it be £5.99 for a newish release when you only get 24 hours to watch? Renting a DVD or Blu-ray is less money, and typically I can keep it for 3 days.

Isn't that the opposite of the buying price anomaly we're discussing?

[cdd]

Well since joining the £49-down-the-drain-before-you-even-order-anything club known as Amazon Prime, any semblance of loyalty to places like HMV has gone in the same direction. Plus if you're (un)lucky enough to live in London (Birmingham also benefits) you get evening delivery so you can order something in the morning and get it that same day which is fab.

So it's a combination of that for me, and the fact that HMV never has what I want owing to it stocking a repetitive array of crap.

And I don't think anyone seriously watches Blu Ray either, the quality gain isn't substantial enough unlike VHS-->DVD.

[cwathen]

Surprised they're still trading to be honest. If they weren't able to capture the market after Virgin/Zavvi wernt south, then there's obviously no market left.

I think the fact that they *don't* have any real competition is actually one of their biggest problems. Commercial ventures need to constantly raise their game if they are to keep growing, but they will only do that if they've got something else pushing them. Without competition, they will stand still and tire very quickly, which has clearly happened at HMV since 2009.

The biggest problem of all though has to be the deranged way their expansion programme has been handled in recent years, especially bolstered by the Virgin Megastore/Zavvi units they have taken over. Instead of trying to find new markets and going into places which don't allready have an HMV, they instead have embarked on a programme of opening additional stores in towns/cities where HMV allready trades to take advantage of better locations, whilst leaving all the original stores in place even though it often creates the ludicrous situation where they have ended up having multiple stores located around the corner from each other.

Granted, very often the new stores are in much better locations than the old ones, but why not just move the store, rather than over expanding in this way?

DVDs in shops and DVDs in the post are generally on borrowed time anyway. Even downloads are apparently on the way out, as the future is said to be streaming.

Well, according to Apple anyway.

I think that's certainly what Apple and their ilk would like you to think. They've gotten people used to buying DRM-locked digital copies of things which only last for finite amounts of time and/or cannot be easily transferred to another device/person. Of course that's a much more profitable model for them than nasty old CDs and DVDs (and tapes and videos before them) which can be played without extra charge for as long as the media lasts and there is equipment to play it on, and where they can be easily sold on second hand thus limiting the amount of royalities a rights holder can make.

Personally, I think people are more wise to this than Apple et al realise, and so there will always be a market for some kind of permanent media on which such material can be bought rather than it all eventually coming down to streaming and downloading - and as long as the market is there, it will be catered for.

That said, I like shops for the simple fact that you can walk in, pick up your desired piece of merchandise and take it home. The common acceptance of ordering online then waiting for the post seems, well, a bit of a step backwards.

I think that is certainly not something that should be underestimated. I am a very impatient person. When I decide that I want something, I want it now, even if I need to pay for the priviledge. I am the person who will pay £45 for a box set in HMV that I can get for £25 on Amazon, purely because I don't want to wait for Amazon to deliver it. Based on the fact that HMV do still seem to do a lot of business, I can't be the only one.

The question may be whether or not HMV are actually making much of a profit despite their apparent high turnover. I spent a long time working in electrical retail (for an independent retailer at that) and whilst the internet shopper may have baulked at our 'expensive' prices, on many/most items there was very little profit to be made when you considered our overheads and supplier arrangements. The internet retailer who did a TV for £100 less than we did undoubtedly made more money than us on it, too. I can't believe it's a completely different situation for HMV.

[Square Eyes]

Hope it survives, interent shopping is fine, but I like the physicality of browsing around the place.

We are going to end up with a very dull high street consisting of Greggs, pound shops and mobile phone outlets at this rate.

[Sput]

Clothes should be pretty safe, as should TESCO!