Zavvi (ex-Virgin Megastore)

Just announced in Administration I guess this is another in a long line to be announced .

Seem to have been quite unlucky in there circumstances, being the stock issues after woolies collapsed, but still, I dont think there's much future for this type of store any more, especially when the majority of what they stock is bought online these days.

Had to pop into town this morning and there was signs up saying they would be closed at the start of January,although the one in Bournemouth would stay open.Same as Woolies though not many discounted items.

One of those shops I always took the time to look in but never actually bought anything from there.

Tis a shame, that'll be another huge empty shop in the centre of Coventry.

will be some good sales in jan...

Shame, they put out the best TV ad for Chinese Democracy of any of the retailers.

Was in woolworths in Portsmouth(commercial road) and found that you could buy parts of the store.

They've gone downhill in the last few years, taken out nearly all the specialist music that people might actually want to buy from a proper retailer, and filled the stores up with DVDs and books that you can get far cheaper from supermarkets or the internet. I'm not surprised at all that they've gone under.

Still, sad to see another shop go, they were good a few years back.

Think you will find that this particular failure was due to a (probably) lazy and stupid decision to source exclusively from on wholeasaler.

Would have thought that there is still a viable business to rescue, as they are unopposed in quite a lot of locations.

with the current economic climate and online "stores" being so popular, who is next to go?

Just a casualty of a changing business environment. Same as Woolies, and I seriously doubt WH Smiths can keep going long term. There's just no obvious selling point. You can't make money anymore selling things that are cheaper online, plus paying rents for large stores. Zavvi didn't have the depth of products Virgin did, and wasn't as cheap as online.

 

HMV will have to have a bit of a rethink too if they're to compete with online retailers. They have the best chance because of their brand power, and many go there for the range of music offered, but that won't be enough in the longer term.

The one thing that WH Smiths has is Newspaper Distribution, thousands of little independent retailers and even multiples are supplied their daily newspaper requirement by WH Smiths. There is not a van from the Sun and then another from the Telegraph and so on making individual deliveries. Also if you notice they have downsized many of their stores over the years from the massive ones they use to trade from.

All the stores without a true identity are the ones that will suffer, Woolies lost their identity years ago they were appealing to the Wilkinson Poundland customer but without the value. Pier were chintzy stores with no substance, Whittards were very specialist, Zavvi never got into peoples conciousness like Virgin did, and they suffered mainly because their main supplier went pop on the back of Woolies.

So WH Smith better hope Tesco don't move into Newspaper distribution, although that is a fairly closed shop to anyone wishing to make in roads: Just ask Eddie Shah