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E-mail: JohnEDouglas@gmail.com
Blog: http://johneoindouglas.blogspot.com/
16th of January 2013
Dear Sir/Madam,
UNSOUND RETAILING
Whilst it is very sad for employees of Jessops, Blockbuster and HMV to lose their jobs at this time of year, the loss of these retail outlets really needs to be put into perspective. If Internet traders can supply goods cheaper and more conveniently than town centre shops (with all their parking problems deliberately engineered by local councils), then these dinosaur enterprises will inevitably become extinct.
Perhaps if HMV had not alienated customers like myself by stopping stocking their traditional 78's, I might have been persuaded to continue shopping there. As it is, my needs are now more than adequately catered for online!
John Eoin Douglas
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That's a very short sighted view. And, ironically, if shops like HMV are to survive, it's by offering a blended model where they have 99.99% of the things most people would want - all the current top 200 CDs, DVDs and movies and the top selling back catalogue items - and by making it easy to access any other content you might possibly want, in store, for delivery from a central warehouse.
ReplyDeleteThe huge advantage an online supplier of your favourite 78 has is that they only need to hold one or two in a central warehouse, whereas HMV would have to hold 4-800 of them to ensure that the branch you went in to had one. That might be 3 years sales. And they'll all be in the wrong place at the wrong time. That's not a game they can afford to play. A small number of independents that people are willing to travel to can get away with it.