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| No time for last minutes bargains to be swept up |
Okay, I admit, I usually struggle to get going in the new year. It seems to take me a few weeks to get over the anti climax of the festive season and just get back into my normal stride. There's still loads of mince pies and Christmas cake left over and enough malt whiskey to last until the next general election. Come to think about it that may be sooner than we previously thought so I better get drinking! One thing that seems to never change though is the contsant threat of imminent shop closures. The latest of course being Jessops, the photographic retailer which was established in the 1930s. I remember buying my first proper camera from their New Oxford Street flagship store in the 1980s when I worked in that area. How proud I was of my Olympus compact and it rewarded me with loads of stunning prints. But in the 25 or so years which have passed times have changed for ever and customers seem to be happy to let household names go by the way side to let the new age retailers on the interweb take over. I passed Jessops this morning on my way into work because I felt sad for them, sad for the High Street in general and sad for the employees whose livelihoods are being effected. I also admit that a small part of me wanted to get in the shop and buy that Canon EOS 600D SLR, at a large discount of course, which I've been pondering over for far too long. It seems that I haven't been alone in my pondering; camera usage has increased dramatically over the last five years but this increase has largely been with inbuilt cameras on mobile phones and, more recently, so called smartphones. I'm afraid I am guilty of this and have thought how nice it would be to have an SLR but, then, would I have got my £600 worth of use out of it? Probably not, so I held off buying one until I could easily afford one; that turned out to be too late for Jessops. That said the recession clearly paid its part in the store group's sudden closure. Some of you may find it surprising that I'm ever the optimist though. Yes I really am. For what my opinion is worth, and this is based partly on my day to day observations of shoppers over the last few months compared with other years, I think we have seen the worst of this recessionary period. Shoppers are fed up with the doom and gloom and won't hold off buying things forever. Eventually you have to replace the dishwasher, the leaking kettle and the garden fencing. Then you'll go out and treat yourself to that pair of designer jeans or Nespresso coffee machine because, as economists say, in the long run we're all dead! So my predictions for New Year are: the economy will grow around 2%. Retail sales will be markedly up on 2012 full year by the end of 2013. The stock market, led by another tech shares surge, will rise by at least 20%. House prices will start to show a steady increase as more new buyers decide that they need somewhere permanent to live. Finally the printed book will make a resurgence as people realise that kindles and other electronic tablets are a souless way to read a beautifully created story. Well I can at least live in hope on that one!...
4 comments:
Reading between the lines it seems that, yet again, the banks played a part in the demise of Jessops, with HSBC blocking a last minute deal which might have saved the company.
Banks, for all their boasting, know absolutely NOTHING about how to run a business. Remember these are the same people who gambled so recklessly playing games on the futures market, and spot-betting on share prices using OPM (Other People's Money).
I feel desperately sorry for the people who have lost their jobs at Jessops, along with all others affected by the mess the banks have caused over the last five years. One thing is certain though, our "friends" in the city will still be paying themselves huge bonuses, despite their gross incompetence!
I admire your optimism. I expect it will take more than a year for all the toxid debt to be washed out. The brave and fortunate will survive the downturn, those will low debts, good products, loyal customers - the rest will struggle. In a few years' time we will appreciate Tonbridge High Street with its real shops and real people. Till then, I will put off my buying that new camera that I also had my eye on but don't really need and make that recovery a little more elusive. Perhaps I can at least afford to go and buy a book or two ...
"Things are looking up"? Really? Now we hear HMV are calling in the administrators/asset strippers/wreckers. No doubt the shyster banks are behind this latest bloodletting on the High Street as well!
Where now will those of us who still prefer to buy a physical product, rather than a digital download, be able to buy our CD's on the High Street?
Unfortunately people (especially those belonging to the so-called "digital generation") have been conned over this digital download nonsense. MP3 files are compressed, ie. "bastardised" versions of the original recording, and whilst they may well sound "ok" on mobile devices, do not give the same quality of sound achieved by the original recording.
As well as the banks the "I want it now" generation must share some of the blame for the demise of HMV purely because of the decline in sales of CD's, (Strange this comes at a time when vinyl is starting to make a comeback). Not all new technology is good technology, and change for change's sake is no change at all!
Well, in the case of HMV - what goes around, comes around. They were pretty much responsible for the death of many independent record stores. HMV also charged way over the odds for their products - I can remember chart CDs being £15 pounds or so 10-15 years ago...
Maybe now these big chains are starting to fold there will be space on the high street again for the small independents where you are able to browse through not just the chart and big record company items but also smaller run items and *gasp * vinyl......
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