3Rd Big Name Gone Into Administration In Less Than A Month - Who's Next?

[barney15c]

Blockbusters, retail businesses falling like dominoes, wonder if the pressure will increase on these firms that avoid corporation tax?

[emmie]

most of these companies have not been able to fight off online companies that offer better deals, sadly i think there will be more to come.

[woofgang]

well but blockbusters has been living on borrowed time for many years. Streaming, downloads, mail rental and cheaper purchase have all eroded their market.

[jno]

Blockbuster's business model was videotapes on shelves - long gone. Films are now available from a much wider variety of sources that don't require you to go down the High St in the snow.

[barney15c]

i dont think there is hardly a video (DVD) hire shop left now is there , its all online, streamed these days

[Buenchico]

Who's next?

Well, despite the new CEO having helped to turn things round, I wouldn't consider buying any shares in W H Smith

. . . or in Majestic Wine

. . . or in Hawkin's Bazaar

. . . or in Bonmarche

. . . or in CarpetRight

. . . or in, etc, etc

[Smowball]

Totally agree with Buenchico

[barney15c]

or gift vouchers (where appropriate)

[doctordb]

W h smith make a lot of money from their airport and motorway services monopoly. They should be fine.

[anotheoldgit]

Ah, those days of the Video shop, where one could hire a film for one night costing £1.

Considering that to buy a pre-recorded VHS tape cost nearly £40, it was quite a deal.

[jno]

WHSmith as doctorb says are concentrating on captive audiences these days, which is how they started out. I don't see them going under any time soon. Hawkin's Bazaar from memory already went into administration?

[douglas9401]

I'll have a P please Bob. I blame Simon Mayo.

[WHU010]

WH Smith must be making money from all the post offices that are now in their stores - would be a major problem if they went under, Thought Hawkins Bizarre has already gone last year sometime. Our High Street is now full of poundstores, betting shops and money exchange places and its very sad and not easy to support local shops when there is so little choice

[hc4361]

I'm surprised Blockbusters lasted as long as it did.

[Buenchico]

WHU010:
Hawkin's Bazaarr closed 57 stores (after going into administration and a subsequent management buy-out) but 8 are still trading.

[sp1814]

Blockbuster didn't fully understand how to best leverage their brand identity.

They were the biggest video rental business in the country. They should've invested in the infrastructure required to battle Apple, Netflix and LoveFilm years ago.

Fact is, when people have a recognised brand put in front of them, they are more likely to trust the product (think of the way that Virgin have diversified from their original business model).

It's sad that people will be losing their jobs, but why on earth anyone would trek to a video store when so many of us can download a film in seconds from the comfort of our armchairs is beyond me.

Massive split infinitive there.

Sorry.

[emmie]

Woolworths went because it didn't restructure, kept the same old tired look, and its bigwigs borrowed oodles of money late in the day to keep the business afloat, which promptly went bang. It's online business seems to be thriving. I suspect that Bonmarche, a shop i quite like will go, already seen any number of it's stores close, who next, well could be anyone, seeing as how all the major retailers are having some problems. Will we one day see the demise of M&S?

[bibblebub]

I've been buying DVDs/Blu-Rays for a dozen years now and I much prefer a professionally packaged disk to a download that gets chucked onto a blank disk. Besides which I haven't updated my PC to have a Blue-Ray drive for burning them and I don't have unlimited bandwidth for downloads each month.

[hc4361]

Downloading on to a pc isn't the only way to watch films though - Virgin and Sky customers can pay to watch films of their choice on their tv.

[jake-the-peg]

Kodak - Another classic example of a business in a dominant position failing to adapt to a changing market


It's incredible really Blockbusters should have seen this coming and should have gotten into the streaming market and leveraged their position to dominate it

[jno]

not sure about Kodak - they made film, and the market just vanished.

They could have concentrated on cameras instead, but Minolta, which was already a big name in cameras, gave it up altogether a few years ago. There's more to it than adapting, you still have to actually succeed, in what is a comparatively unfamiliar market.

Jessops went bust because the smartphone market overwhelmed the camera market. It was a deliberate decision to stay out of the phone market because they knew nothing about it; so there's no guarantee that if they'd started selling phones they'd still be around. Their decision was wrong with hindsight, but not at the time.