Metropol

Hawkins Bazaar also in administration.

Alexia wrote:Hawkins Bazaar also in administration.

Hawkins Bazaar is a shop full of tat. I once had to go in to try and return a present for a friend and the 'manager' of the store was having non of it even though the product had never been opened, had a receipt and was bought within 7 days. The irony was on the back of the receipt it had a message about Hawkins 28 Day refund policy.

That's Entertainment who have taken over the old Virgin/Zavvi store nearby I'm sure will fold soon. The store appears to be around 60% pre-owned CDs which certainly isn't sustainable when they're less them about (two) pound less than a brand new copy from Amazon or Play.

WHSmith will be safe because of their profitable travel business. Even if they decided to reduce their presence on the high street there would be no need for wholesale closures like if they were closing down entirely. Remember many Woolworths branches were probably profitable.

The impression of Wilkinsons seems to have changed a lot recently, a few years back it was seen as a slightly more upmarket version of a cheapo scruffy poundshop, now it is pretty much identical to how Woolworths was.

The travel and high street businesses are run as distinct units (as was the News operation before they sold it). I wouldn't be surprised to see them split.

Wilkinson is so much nicer than Woolies ever was. They've made a great turnaround - although what possessed them to keep that clearly outdated brand so long I do not know.

James L H wrote:

Alexia wrote:Hawkins Bazaar also in administration.

Hawkins Bazaar is a shop full of tat.

tillyoshea wrote:I also think M&S is going to have a bad year: They seem to be doing everything humanly possible to disassemble the formula that brought them back from the brink a few years ago (e.g. over-diversification of instore brands again, alienating their younger female customers again, making their stores bland and impossible to navigate again, withdrawing other brands from their food halls again)

Branded goods in the foodhalls do not work at M&S on many levels, the only places it really does work is in the healthcare bit. Otherwise all they do is sit there at useless margins (they get it from Booker you know, so crap margins) and also ruin the flow of the shelves. One fantastic thing about M&S was because they had complete control of product they were able to have entire asiles with every shelf at a matching level. It looks incredibly slick, now due to Kelloggs boxes being different this is ruined.

Having said that, the rest of Bolland's changes are poor and the sooner he goes the better. Morrisons after all got rid of him with that backhanded compliment from Sir Ken, "patently not a retailer". Bolland is marketing and the problem is, there is nothing WRONG with M&S's marketing. It's the other issues they need to resolve and due to this, he is just damaging things.

Pete wrote:Branded goods in the foodhalls do not work at M&S on many levels, the only places it really does work is in the healthcare bit. Otherwise all they do is sit there at useless margins (they get it from Booker you know, so crap margins) and also ruin the flow of the shelves. One fantastic thing about M&S was because they had complete control of product they were able to have entire asiles with every shelf at a matching level. It looks incredibly slick, now due to Kelloggs boxes being different this is ruined.

I agree that it looks less slick, but the thinking behind it was that is would encourage more people to do their "full shop" at M&S, rather than just picking up one or two things - and, at least locally, that's worked impressively, resulting a big sales bump. I think the idea that you can now reverse that policy and folk will switch to higher-margin M&S products instead of brands is seriously flawed - they'll just go elsewhere.

Other half got a £20 HMV voucher from someone for Christmas. Found he couldn't use it online. Went to the shop and found the box set he wanted £20 more expensive than online. They wouldn't price match the website.

He still has the £20 voucher. I've told him to spend it on *something* before the shops go tits up.

Presumably they've entirely separated the two businesses - shops and online - to ringfence the online bit when the shops fail.

marksi wrote:Presumably they've entirely separated the two businesses - shops and online - to ringfence the online bit when the shops fail.

hmv.com, as with most online CD/DVD retailers, is registered and based in the Channel Islands (HMV Guernsey Ltd) so has always been a separate entity from the high street shops (it's all in the T&Cs if you're that bored).

It's hugely annoying but no different than say Tesco and tescoentertainment.com in regards to in-store vs online price discrepancies.

You're either buying a product from a company called HMV or you're not. What's the difference in whether you pay them in cash, in person, or online? With that level of stupidity and customer service no wonder they're in trouble.

There's no need for it to be like that - a simple solution would be for HMV stores to act as an agent for HMV online, and sell e-vouchers (no different to how you can buy Debenhams vouchers at Sainsburys).