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There won’t be any administration misery on the horizon for the Dixons group of tech shops, thanks to the electronics giant reporting a “strong performance” over the critical Christmas cash grab, aided by huge sales of tablets across its Currys and PC World stores.
Tablets didn’t actually contribute a huge amount to the Dixons Group bottom line, though, with the chain claiming the low profit margins on the many cheaper models it shifted actually helped to lower its headline margin numbers.
Still, with a eight per cent like-for-like increase in sales across the UK and Ireland, at least there’s no sign of any emergency fire sale on the horizon for one of our biggest surviving high street chains. Your local Currys will not be a Poundland by the summer. [Dixons [PDF] via BBC]
Is that purely because consumers now only have to wander in to Currys/PC World instead of Comet and Currys/PC World?
Probably. The demise of Comet, not to mention speculation around its future heading into the holiday shopping period, most likely did Dixons a wonder of good. Now that their prime retail park competitor is no more, things will probably keep getting better for them.
It also helps that Dixons stores were generally better designed and product placement was superior over Comet.
BBC said loss sales of Comet’ has contributed to a boost in sales in the Dixons Grp. But when they are all that is left I think online sales will boost and Currys/PC World will go out of business as well.
Well people still buy a lot from Currys/PC World online
Also DSG own Pixmania too which a lot of people, including myself, buy from
I still prefer the traditional buying a new computer from the outlet rather online (that is if I can’t save online).
maybe,.. thing is they are smart with online price match, which helps as it means when it goes tits up or want to play with it before you buy it you can walk into the store and try it or shout at the sales rep for selling you a faulty product. DSG`s buy and collect works well-ish as well, they have improved their stock records quite a lot, they aint great but not bad either. It now being the only PC, TV and white goods retailer left nation wide i think they will be ok for a long while yet.
I’m inclined to argee – you can go in, fondle, and then ask them to match the lower price you’ve just found online!
I’ve got a custom PC so I don’t have this problem, I just buy new components
When I’m buying a laptop I do go in and have a fondle, see if I like it, weight, keyboard, etc
Deloitte is always there whenever any goes into administration, I wonder why.
I think the online business is where Comet fell down, and one of the main reasons DSG is still going pretty well.
They have built a strong online business with a high street presence which other online retailers don’t/can’t offer, and they have managed to narrow the price gap a fair bit. Margins suffer as a result of this, but if they continue to grow their sales like they are, they’ll do just fine
Well yer, they took one of their best known brands and made it an online only business about 6 years ago.. only late last year did they fully merge the brand into Currys to help stop confusion for customers. Pretty smart really.