BIG high street chain buys Smaller high street chain!

Thats bad news really for highstreet competition. In cambridge town the two stores are about 50 feet apart. Why now keep both open?

I never buy games from them anyway, only hardware occasionally at the right deal price.
 
I was waiting for this thread to appear, I work for the smaller chain and we've all been told by our managers not to expect any changes in the way we do things but were all pretty skeptical knowing 'the big chain' like we do (90% of us used to work there!)
TBH they would be crazy to re-brand the smaller store as the two different stores attract two different types of customer so keeping us the way we are would be the sensible thing to do :)
 
From what I have heard they will be keeping the stores open with the same name above the door but all the money made from the store will go to the new owners.

There is money apparently available as well to improve the stores but if the cheaper products dont seem to add a few quid to there price labels, Id be very much suprised.
 
Can't see all the stores remaining open weather it be the small or larger ones to give way. When I shop at Basildon they have 2 of the larger chain stores within 400 metres of each other and a smaller one in between them so some will have to give way. I like to have the choice to shop at either so not pleased if they decide to change them all to the same larger brand.
 
fieldy said:
TBH they would be crazy to re-brand the smaller store as the two different stores attract two different types of customer so keeping us the way we are would be the sensible thing to do :)
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Exactly why I favour the decision to keep seperate :), the headline made me cringe at first.

Shiner, they made it clear that they will keep the store names and branding(?). There's 4 BIG stores within few minutes walking distance in Bristol, don't think they need a 5th :p
 
Didnt they do the same with E/B a few years and the slowly got rid of all the E/B stores ?
 
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There may be a load of stores all in 1 area, I live in a small town and we have 3 which are always packed on the weekend, if i was the boss at the big store I wouldnt change anything, just sit in my chair with a fat cuban cigar in my mouth taking money from the big store in my right hand and money from the smaller store in my left.

Theres no need to change anything????
 
Agr3sive said:
There may be a load of stores all in 1 area, I live in a small town and we have 3 which are always packed on the weekend, if i was the boss at the big store I wouldnt change anything, just sit in my chair with a fat cuban cigar in my mouth taking money from the big store in my right hand and money from the smaller store in my left.

Theres no need to change anything????
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But the bean counter don’t think like that, they will look at that and think "why do we have 2 stores with in a 1 min walking distance of each other?" after that they will shut one down and EXPECT people to go to the other store.
 
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Where I live there are 2 big chain shops (1 used to be EB) and 1 of smaller chain shops, all within about 2 minutes walk of each other. I can't see there being any change to the shop fronts to be honest, but I can see the smaller chains prices going up.
 
I just hope they don't get rid of the massive stokpiles of old pre owned PC games/PS2/PSone/etc games and DVD's for like peanuts prices. I hate the way the BIG store sells the preowned stuff, they are ******* theives the way they do that :mad:
 
Hopefully the smaller store retains it's knowledgeable staff and bargains, it's got to be tempting to do a bit of price fixing to massage profits now though - ala the situation in high street consumer electronics a few years back.
 
XPE said:
Didnt they do the same with E/B a few years and the slowly got rid of all the E/B stores ?
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I had a job in Game back when I was 18; at the time it was owned by Electronics Boutique. They appeared on our payslip and company information and we also swapped staff back and forth between Game and EB if they needed help.

They found the EB brand wasn't as successful as the Game brand so like you say, they phased out all the stores. I'm not sure what happened next though, as Game today is The Game Store Group and appears to no longer have any connection to Electronics Boutique which is still going in the US. Did someone else buy it? Or did they just setup a proper UK based company?
 
Nexus said:
I had a job in Game back when I was 18; at the time it was owned by Electronics Boutique. They appeared on our payslip and company information and we also swapped staff back and forth between Game and EB if they needed help.

They found the EB brand wasn't as successful as the Game brand so like you say, they phased out all the stores. I'm not sure what happened next though, as Game today is The Game Store Group and appears to no longer have any connection to Electronics Boutique which is still going in the US. Did someone else buy it? Or did they just setup a proper UK based company?
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As far as I'm aware "EB" no longer exists in the UK, it bought BIG and changed it's name to BIG group which then became independant to EB in the US. Then the US EB got bought out by Gamestop. The two stores still exist independant name wise.
 
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uchuff said:
Hopefully the smaller store retains it's knowledgeable staff and bargains, it's got to be tempting to do a bit of price fixing to massage profits now though - ala the situation in high street consumer electronics a few years back.
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Knowledgeable staff? The manager at the shop near me talks to you like your something he just stood on.
 
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