 Originally Posted by Cykotic
so thats Play.com, Jessops and now HMV...
Who's next??
Since when were Play.com in trouble? 
As for HMV - yeah, I used to go in there all the time as a student and would easily spend £50. I often bought DVDs on two-for-one deals and the like, but I also bought discs for my course - and as such once I spent £40 just on Nosferatu and Metropolis, and nowadays that's just a moronic amount to spend on a mere two movies. I've bought things in there when I've been in on occasion - but always items that were on sale - either at the same price as online, or surprisingly at a cheaper price. Most of the time I'd just browse - I liked the act of browsing in HMV - I remember we'd always rush to the massive HMV in London when we were on trips to London with our school (after we'd visited the gallery we were there to attend in the first place), and I'd just love browsing the shelves of VHS tapes (aye, back then).
However, when you've got three HMVs in Edinburgh (two of which are on the same ruddy street), you do have to wonder who is in charge and how out-of-step with the current climate they are. Like with Jessops - they're a niche store for enthusiasts, but how many people really are photography enthusiasts. Most people have a camera phone and that'll do them, and those who do spend cash on SLRs and additional lenses etc aren't doing so every month. They'll buy a camera and keep it for years, so you're not going to get much traffic - I feel as if Jessops wasn't really keeping up with current market trends, just like Woolworths where it tried to supply everything, but in the end couldn't really attract people into the store. We all felt a sense of nostalgia for Woolworths, but how often did we really go into it?
When I was a kid Woolworths was an ideal store, providing a lot of different items for good prices, but they go overtaken by an expanding and diversifying market and they failed to respond to that - and as such they shut down. Sad, but it's inevitable if you can't keep up with the wider market.
So often I've seen the prices in HMV and they're piss take high. We do need variety and competition on the high street, but you've got to be competitive in your pricing and corporate/commercial structuring as well.
A right old bugger for those who got HMV vouchers over Christmas - although hopefully they won't be scuppered for long and will be able to use them online soon. Game recently went through troubles, but it's still going, and Zavvi is online now (not sure if they still have stores though) ... although I do remember Virgin Megastore going down the drain a while back (I'd often leap frog between HMV and Virgin Megastore at Uni comparing prices, but more often than not they had the same items at the same price - what was the point of that? - the only difference was what type of sales they had on - e.g. 4-for-£30 on DVDs in Virgin Megastore, versus two-for-one on DVDs in HMV).
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