please empty your brain below
Although to be fair...
Oddbins - Threshers group went under...
Blacks, Jessops, JJB - All are in severe financial difficulty.

So we may not have predicted well, but we had a few close encounters.

I miss Borders :(

Kirk | Homepage | 02.01.10 - 9:27 a.m. | #

I expect it was those sports socks for my Dad I bought at JJB on Christmas Eve that saved them. Still not sure who shops at Peacocks though.

Huw | Homepage | 02.01.10 - 10:50 a.m. | #

Ah yes, Borders. I was a frequent visitor there myself, and I was also in the branch on the Charing Cross Road on its final day of trading. What a sorry sight it was, with bare shelves and just a few scattered volumes here and there, all at absurdly low prices. I bought four books there (after waiting in the half hour long queue) and then made my exit. Borders was a good store, so it's a pity that of all the stores on your list, it was only Borders that disappeared.

Maybe you should look at this list again in 2011, to see if there are any further casulties of the ongoing recession?

Andrewh | 02.01.10 - 1:43 p.m. | #

It's worth remembering what Borders actually got horribly wrong:

1) Getting involved with Valco, a firm that specializes in profiteering from bankruptcies.

2) Overstretch: it had a number of good stores in large cities, plus a number of bizarre suburban and small city ones. The latter lot should never have been opened.

3) Wasting shelf space on books that publishers have overpriced. Academic publishers basically have an unviable business model compared to other low-volume publishers (e.g. the Welsh-language sector). If a book is worth £15, there's no point in stocking it at £29.99 -- broadly speaking, if the price of a book exceeds £1 for binding plus 3p per page, it's not going to sell, and getting that nearer 2p per page may be necessary to justify the shelf space. Academic publishers need to take control of their costs or die: they'll run out of booksellers to kill one day.

So there it is: nothing to do with sofas and coffee.

James D | 02.01.10 - 2:00 p.m. | #

I suspect that the people killing bookshops are those of you who go in them, browse around to decide what you want, and then go home and order online from a cheaper place.

Or worse, those of you with the iPhone app that reads the book's barcode and lets you order it automatically from the internet, from in the bookshop where you're standing looking at it! Do that near me and you'll get a stern lecture :)

Blue Witch | Homepage | 02.01.10 - 4:52 p.m. | #

I dream about stern lectures in bookshops

Johnny Topaz | 02.01.10 - 5:17 p.m. | #

Where will the odd types go when the bookshops close....I once accidentally trod on the hand of a leather worshiper when I was browsing in a bookshop once....He'd never have got such an extended whiff of my leathergoods anywhere else.
(I'd put my handbag on the floor...Oh, I'm just making this story sound worse. Sorry!)

B | 02.01.10 - 10:11 p.m. | #

I get most of the really obscure books that I want from the internet retailers anyway. Even the local Uni bookstore doesn't carry what I am looking for. At least I buy them though instead of reading them only on Google Books. :-)
Nice to see the recession was not as dire as predicted. I think most newspapers and newscasters are fear mongerers anyway. They probably made it twice as bad as it needed to be with all those screaming headlines.

Ileen | 02.01.10 - 10:51 p.m. | #

Borders are still going strong in Brisbane I'm pleased to say. Dymmocks is looking a little sad though, beautiful building in town but shelves full of 'specials'. Very unappealing.

marilyn | 03.01.10 - 5:46 a.m. | #

How on eath does Borders fail and the awful WH Smith survive. There really is no justice in the world.

Chris | 04.01.10 - 2:52 p.m. | #

Going back to the comment about academic publications - they are not priced based on the cost of paper and ink, but on the cost of the research that underpins the content they convey.

JK Rowling might be able to get away with a coffee shop and the local library for her muse, but academic publications are a tiny bit more complex to put together.

Ian Visits | Homepage | 05.01.10 - 12:31 p.m. | #

You should do a set of predictions for companies you expect to do well this year. There is too much doom and gloom.

Some smaller companies like the Hut near where i live in Warrington are thriving.

Ernest | Homepage | 15.01.10 - 9:40 a.m. | #

Actually I have just seen Bosch are closing in Cardiff so perhaps it is all doom and gloom.

Ernest | Homepage | 15.01.10 - 9:53 a.m. | #

Blacks did a CVA, as did JJB I think, which is as close to insolvency as you can get without it actually being insolvent. It was an innovation - in previous years such companies would have gone bust. Jessops, meanwhile, has been taken over by its bank.

Tom | 15.01.10 - 3:15 p.m. | #

BHS made it as far as June 2016

diamond geezer | Homepage | 02.06.16 - 5:03 p.m. | #











TridentScan v2.10.0 | Privacy Policy