Soldato
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Like I said in the other thread. Not the first or last high street retailer that will close down this year.
HMV Finally closing down for good?
- Thread starter Scania
- Start date
But why were they that price? Because overheads are too high for retail to exist in its current form any more. Blame local councils and shopping centre owners for their high unit fees, blame taxation, blame the government, hell blame people for being savvy and shopping elsewhere like the Internet.
All HMV were doing was trying to keep its head above water in a market that was becoming increasingly challenging. Which was destined to fail, and it has making them the next in a long and growing list of retail casualties.
Not really true. My post was based on the last time I was in an HMV which was around 12 years ago (when the online shopping market wasn't in full flow). They've had plenty of time to adjust their strategy, for example by cutting down on one or more departments - I would have chosen games.
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
But why were they that price? Because overheads are too high for retail to exist in its current form any more. Blame local councils and shopping centre owners for their high unit fees, blame taxation, blame the government, hell blame people for being savvy and shopping elsewhere like the Internet.
All HMV were doing was trying to keep its head above water in a market that was becoming increasingly challenging. Which was destined to fail, and it has making them the next in a long and growing list of retail casualties.
Exactly. Faced with huge cost pressures on one side and internet based rivals selling media products at or below cost (Until they give up or run out of money) for reasons best known only to themselves and it's almost impossible to see what the answer actually was for firms like HMV?
They could increase price to increase margin, but this would cannablise sales.
They could reduce price to be inline with internet retailers, but the margin would as a result be so small that the increased sales still wouldn't cover the massive overheads.
They could significantly reduce store portfolio but this would require large capital expenditure they don't have and which nobody would lend them
etc etc.
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[TW]Fox;23560178 said:
So if it can't adapt it's dead, simple as that really.
Perhaps they saw this coming 12 years ago.
Conversely I find the timing of this rather unlucky for HMV given that play.com has just closed its doors. Admittedly probably wouldn't have made a huge difference but might have stayed their execution for a little longer.
I have just read the thread and it seems a TW Fox against the world thread
It does a bit, doesn't it. Ironically I don't even shop in HMV outside of Christmas anyway
I just think the bigger picture is that this sort of thing continually happening is bad for the consumer and bad for the economy in the long run and not nearly as 'well, they didnt compete, ha ha simples' as people think.
It's a shame that people often celebrate or gloat when this sort of thing happens without realising that in the end, nobody wins.
You have to wonder if more cannot be done to support the high street. It provides employment for millions of people we'd otherwise have to support on welfare, it gets people spending money, yet instead we watch shops fail as councils charge punative car parking charges for people driving into town and prime city centre leases cost an absolute fortune, until such time as the main tenant goes bust where it gets rented to yet another charity shop..
Soldato
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how about stop wasting money buying tons of tablets, headphones and iphone accessory junk and use it to buy more bluray stock (economies of scale) and maintain a large highstreet variety (to beat the supermarkets)
not everyone wants to wait a week for amazon supersaver, people do impulse buy still, especially at the weekends
went in hmv for impulse purchase of total recall bluray on sat and it was £20!!! for £5 difference you can be surprisingly patient, anyway amazon is not as cheap as it was, something to do with jersey selling regulations changing?
not everyone wants to wait a week for amazon supersaver, people do impulse buy still, especially at the weekends
went in hmv for impulse purchase of total recall bluray on sat and it was £20!!! for £5 difference you can be surprisingly patient, anyway amazon is not as cheap as it was, something to do with jersey selling regulations changing?
Perhaps they saw this coming 12 years ago.
Not the point I was making.
Why buy a CD for £18.99 when you could stroll over the road to Virgin/elsewhere and get it for £9.99? (HMV: Late 90s-2013.)
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Soldato
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[TW]Fox;23560111 said:It seemed to be in sections like 'TV' and 'Comedy' and 'Thriller' etc last time I looked? There was even a small 'Anime' section as I remember commenting on Anime as a result
The bluray section is not like this in any HMV I have been to. The DVD sections are spread out. The blurays seem to just be over in one corner in alphabetical order and "overpriced"
Not the point I was making.
Why buy a CD for £18.99 when you could stroll over the road to Virgin/elsewhere and get it for £9.99? (HMV: Late 90s-present.)
What CD's are they still selling for 20 quid other than 7 disc compilations or something? As I said I wasted a gift-card on chart-tat the other day and they were all under a tenner.
Soldato
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High street retailers have been closing my entire lifetime, it's nothing new.
Shops I remember as a kid...
Rumbelows
Ratners
Our Price
Woolworths
C&A's
.. and they're just the ones off the top of my head; and none of those can blame the internet for their downfall.
It's just what happens. Established names will occasionally fail and new names will occasionally blossom. No one is entitled to an ever-lasting business.
Too many big names are just too damn stubborn to change their business models and adopt the "if it ain't broke" mentality until it's too late when they finally have to realise it is too late.
There would have been a point in time where it was clear the likes of Amazon could well take off whilst HMV were still much richer and bigger than them. That was the time for HMV to try and either buy them out or knock them out by adopting the same model, using their larger exposure.
Unfortunately for HMV, they waited until the likes of Amazon had got quite large before they launched their own web based sales, and even then they still didn't want to offer the same kind of prices out of fear that customers would question the disparity of the difference in price between buying online and in-store.
Or because they clung to an outdated notion that you should sell a product for more than it costs you
Important distinction time - the cost price to the publisher, or the cost price to the retailer? There are some pretty enormous margins in this sort of product but they tend to be further down the supply chain than end user retail.
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Blue Cross sale is wack, should be 25% of everything, what did they expect?
Yet another store which didn't move with the times fast enough.
Yet another store which didn't move with the times fast enough.
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Gift cards, Third party vouchers, pre-played games and swap shop games have all been stopped as of now. Refund and exchange also gone.
Email went out to all HMV staff tonight: https://twitter.com/navbasiTLW/status/290946153149775873/photo/1
Customers have been refused tonight already.
Email went out to all HMV staff tonight: https://twitter.com/navbasiTLW/status/290946153149775873/photo/1
Customers have been refused tonight already.