Metropol

Lorns wrote:Well whaddaya know. This place is first for all the news.
I woz reading your predictions about Zavvi going under the guillotine here last night and lo and behold today its happening. This place has magic powers or is cursed.

* scary woo noise*

JJB will be next.

[/hoping Lorns is right]

Neil Green wrote:

barcode wrote:Did anyone have Officers Club??

If so give yourself ten points!

I'm sure all the people whose jobs are at risk this Christmas are glad that someone got those ten points...

Must be unsettling to work for Officers Club, they always seem to be holding closing down sales. :roll:

It makes me laugh at the misfortune of many of these shops.

Zavvi spends lots and lots on new stores (painting,interiors etc) and within a year, it's gone
JJB spends lots on a rebrand, builds lots of new stores (it built a massive one here 2years ago) and it's close to going under.
MFI rebrands, new adverts, refresh inside lots of stores and it's gone within a year.

Now I know its almost like an unwritten rule that a failing business should rebrand before going under, but why don't they just save all the effort and just face the music?

math-yoooo wrote:Zavvi spends lots and lots on new stores (painting,interiors etc) and within a year, it's gone
JJB spends lots on a rebrand, builds lots of new stores (it built a massive one here 2years ago) and it's close to going under.
MFI rebrands, new adverts, refresh inside lots of stores and it's gone within a year.

Zavvi's slightly different - it needed to re-establish itself as a different brand to Virgin after the management buy-out.

That's a little bit of a shame and an omen of sorts for Wikinson who is about to rebrand as Wilko and finally bring themselves out of the 70s.

They might just be next but I can see Sports Direct (responsible for Lillywhites and... ugh, Sports Soccer) falling hard if JJB doesn't.

Malpass93 wrote:

Lorns wrote:Well whaddaya know. This place is first for all the news.
I woz reading your predictions about Zavvi going under the guillotine here last night and lo and behold today its happening. This place has magic powers or is cursed.

* scary woo noise*

JJB will be next.

[/hoping Lorns is right]

I do hope not. Nobody wants to see thousands more people unemployed at christmas. Or any time of the year.

There is a wee bit of hope for our high street. According to SE news the other night more French and Belgians have been channel hopping to spend their Euros over here.

math-yoooo wrote:It makes me laugh at the misfortune of many of these shops.

Now I know its almost like an unwritten rule that a failing business should rebrand before going under, but why don't they just save all the effort and just face the music?

I think Woolworths had the shortest re-branding of all, just a couple of months before going belly up they introduced a new lower-case logo, which appeared in very few places. It counts a really short-lived rebrand too because the administrators opted to use the more familiar Gill Sans Condensed logo.

It's worth remembering that the companies that will go under aren't necessarily the ones that are selling 'tat' or don't seem very busy. It's all to do with how the company is, how good their business plan is, how much debt they have or how much they have saved.

Woolworths and MFI were in trouble for years, Zavvi were unlucky and have been caught up in the Woolworths thing (apparently the Virgin group are going to help out)


I think Dixons (DSG) will be ok, my prediction for a high street shop which will go is Jessops. They've been in trouble for a long while now - they closed a load of branches last year and made loads of people redundant this year, and still have lots of debt. Also the bloke in charge apparently used to run Farepack! :roll:

How about Littlewoods? I've never been there and could never understand why anyone would ever go in.

Littlewood's is run exclusively online now i believe, and it published OK figures last year, so I think if any will go, it would be BHS.

Inspector Sands wrote:

I think Dixons (DSG) will be ok, my prediction for a high street shop which will go is Jessops. They've been in trouble for a long while now - they closed a load of branches last year and made loads of people redundant this year, and still have lots of debt. Also the bloke in charge apparently used to run Farepack! :roll:

Oh so that Jessops doomed then.