24 
I’ve only ever been on the other side of an administration; I’m normally the one getting up early to try and get 20 per cent off a TV or a few Xbox games for cheap. This year, for 2013, I’m the one in the firing line. Approximately one hour before I was meant to close my store, I was informed of the news not by my manager, not even by my area manager, but by Sky News. My employer, Jessops incase you hadn’t already guessed, was in administration with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP.
I’ll tell you a little more about working for Jessops. It’s cushty.
Don’t get me wrong, there are alot of things that make me lose my shit whilst working; most unfortunate is the fact that they have hands and heartbeats, but I still insanely enjoy my job. I’m a photographer; I have an incredible knowledge of the products, and I can make an absolutely brilliant recommendation for customers, up until the point that we get to the till and the entire order ramps up to a cost that I look at and scream inwardly “BUY IT ONLINE!” I mean come on, 40 fucking quid for an 8GB Extreme SD card. Are you serious? They cost £16 on amazon. £16.
Let that sink in. Jessops is a specialist retailer, with a 2000+ workforce. All working ‘to and for the customer’. But when you ask your staff to offer Care Plans and accessories on everything from a D7000 to a 10×8, it’s evident that Jessops were only ever after the customers’ money, not for loyalty. I can easily blab on about how they piss incredibly hard targets upon the floorstaff, requiring these most insane targets to be met with no problem at all. An example: if a customer buys a Canon 6D for £1800 and nothing else, it’s called a naked sale. No big deal right? Wrong. The Sales Expert gets it in his/her earhole harder than an ill-advised virgin, at an almost torturous level. You get verbal abuse from your managers all because something went out ‘naked’. And all despite the fact that you delivered a wonderful customer service experience, and gave the customer nothing but respect and attention, and the product they wanted. All resulting in seeing your pride crushed by your manager because they get a little less money in their bonuses this month.
They are a brilliant company to work for, but on the inside they are viral, visceral and unforgiving. That’s exactly how I believe they went into administration. A company this strict, yet this specialised, cannot afford to mark up prices by 300 per cent (in some cases) and then let the customer allow them to leech onto their loyalty hooks and hope they come back in for more.
Anyway, onto this week’s administration news.
I’ll say this right now; it’s scary hearing that word, considering this company keeps the roof over your head. But at the same time, being a younger person you take it on the chin a bit. But a second later, the expectations of the reactions to the ramifications kick in and you realise just how fucked you could be. Now, I haven’t actually faced a hoard of pissed-off customers, YET. It’s the evening of the announced liquidation as I write this, and I’m just preparing myself for the onslaught of Christmas shoppers who put anywhere up to £500 on a gift card, only to find it’s useless for the time being. I say that because I hope to hell they let customers spend them.
Gift cards, returns, repairs. All blocked. There’s no chance a loyal customer can come into the store and not get pissed off. It’s a seemingly irrelevant process, but apparently the administrators need to understand the business and therefore everything is blocked for the time being, including pre-orders and paid-for stock. So if you are the unlucky man who just dropped £3k on a Canon 6D, couple of prime lenses and a flash gun, and paid for it waiting to come in later to pick it up, it’s a pretty unique bit of luck that the company goes into administration meer hours after the order is placed.
All anyone would ever ask for in this whole situation is support. When my manager confirmed the news, he was so stressed about the situation and coming events that he all he wanted to do was go home. Meanwhile, I’m thinking “who is this fucking moron and why is he being paid so much?” I mean seriously, it’s his job! That’s the exact reason they are there — to MANAGE. It may seem like a one-sided option, but think about it — who would any store employees go to when they don’t know what to do? And yet the Sales Expert is left hanging by his eyelids as he gets customers demanding their stuff back.
Thinking back to Wednesday, the day I heard the news, I had one customer asking for their back-ordered camera. They hadn’t spent alot, only around £200 or so, but the customer was leaving for Heathrow in 45 minutes and needed the camera. We could do nothing but decline any attempt for her to pick up her camera. That’s what it’s boiling down to now; the Sales Experts are informed of so little, yet they are expect to act upon some kind of super-human response when you openly deny a customer their rightful property. Even when you think about it logically, why wouldn’t you? It’s paid-for, anything that needs to be done is done, so just give it out! It’s this kind of initiative which is lacking in the management. Management, wich has now shot the starting gun to Jessops’ last leg. We survived an administration before, but that was in a time where everything was a lot less reliant on computers and such. Sure, Jessops introduced the newest and hottest models as quickly as possible, even offering easy pre-orders, but as always with lady luck, England became a more premium living place; importing got cheaper, and online services stripped effort for all it was worth. And before you know it, 15 mouse clicks before breakfast and you’ve ordered a memory card for 85 per cent less than you could get it in store.
Despite my above complaints, I’m looking forward to the following few weeks; it’ll be a whole new experience for both my career and myself, and I am prepared for an onslaught of customers. With that in mind, if you were given something to be claimed by Jessops, like a gift card, whatever you do, please don’t be an asshole. This is a big opportunity for the whole ‘do unto others’ thing. I have no answers, only facts and figures. I will not be able to do a lot from behind my till, so from one anonymous Jessops employee to you, please be reassured when I say I’m already doing anything and everything that I can.
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Spiels From “Them Below” is our new series of columns written by “them below”; the thousands of readers who comment tirelessly on Gizmodo UK. Have you got something to lament? Extol? Ponder? Get in touch at kat.hannaford[at]futurenet.com. Disclaimer: Spiels From “Them Below” don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of Gizmodo UK or its editors.
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Interesting article. It’s a shame Jessops has gone under but like this commenter says, when you mark up items by 300% even the niceties of shopping and getting advice from knowledgeable staff (take note PC World) go out the window.
Also, Kat – I know these articles are from commenters and other non-journos, but couldn’t there be a slightly tighter control over spelling, grammar and punctuation?
This is what articles look like AFTER Kat corrects them! Have you not read anything else on this site? This is par for the course.
Obviously never read a JD article
Ha, don’t worry I know all about JD and his abuses against the English language. I just found this one to be a bit more ‘rough n ready’ than usual.
I’ve been inured by hyperbole and a half to imagine a big monster whenever anyone writes “alot”. If you have no clue what I’m on about: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.co.uk/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
You’re increasingly becoming quite the little shit, aren’t you?
Cider for the editrix!
COMMENT OF THE FOREVER!!!!!!1!!11!1!!?!!?11/!
Your site is becoming quite the little shit.
And you’re becoming someone whose name is going to be added to my shitlist if you’re not too careful.
No one is asking you to visit the site, you are not obligated to leave your opinion either. I wrote the article in 40 minutes just after I emailed Kat asking if she was interested in having the article on her site. She accepted so I smashed it out the park and wrote exactly how I was feeling toward Jessops. If you’re gonna sit at your computer chair and piss out inane comments stating the fact that you don’t like something, pull your finger out your ass and contribute. If you’re even half as good as you are at writing pointless bullshit comments than you are at starting discussions, you’re wasting your talents.
My comment wasn’t directed at your article so get fucked.
LOLOLOLOLOL best comment ever! I’m gonna frame it and hang it on my wall.
Sorry; I edited it in a huge rush. Will correct shortly.
Can I just say the staff in Jessops near where I work had no idea that their company had filed for administration when I went in after its announcements looking for bargains, so I echo the seemingly poor communication from management.
My sympathies for the way they have had you selling their stock; it sounds very much like Dixons, which seems to have its business centred on post-purchase finance, insurance and care packages rather than on actual sales of products. As soon as people feel the pinch and have less cash to spend, of course they are going to go elsewhere or cut down on the extras.
The staff in Jessops near where I work had no idea, period.
The quality of information that Jessops employees have spewed from their mouths down the years has consistently been atrocious. They seemed to have a knack of finding kids who had absolutely no interest in photographic equipment and managers who had no interest in the kids. Along with Currys, Sky and Yodel they must have ranked as the most likely company to go belly up in 2013.
Consistently overpriced goods and under trained staff leads to the inevitable just amazed it took so long. It had the chance to be the specialist high street supplier for enthusiasts after it successfully killed off most of the independents, yet even with the a clear field it couldn’t see its own shortcomings. They have always been the purchase point of the ill informed or those short of time.
I feel for those that have lost jobs that cared, but as for the company, good riddance.
And as for bitching about spelling and grammar on here, some people take shit pictures, some people cant cook, some cant spell. Why is it people feel a right to moan about literary structure or a poor education in some keyboard warrior superiority attack. Fuck off.
It is a shame, but as mentioned when you mark up [see RIP OFF] customers with these prices in these times of austerity, then they will look elsewhere.
I personally have £160 of vouchers. Might not seem a lot in the grand scheme of things and I did go into a store [Trafford Centre, Manchester] and the manager was papping himself and he could only do what he could. I was very nice, not happy. He mentioned it was the people above him that turned the voucher system off so that could not accept it, which left him hanging and with limited knowledge of what is going on.
While in the store I did mention that at no place did it state vouchers were not accepted, only Sky News (and that’s the The Sun of the online world!) so I figured unless Jessops say or there is a note in the window then surely they should accept them. Move forward from Wednesnday and still no official Jessops notification that they are not accepting vouchers, only word through the media. (again, they have been prone to lies…!)
I do hope this gets solved and I do hope there is a presence on the high street, but they (Jessops) and MANY others really need to rethink the sales strategy and pricing to keep inline with the fast paced online world.
On that note, I will predict a confident R.I.P HMV…
On the matter of notification of gift vouchers, unfortunetly, they dont have to do this at all, you are legally just a creditor to the company going into administration, if there is anything left after HMRC and the banks, you’ll be able to try and claim for it back, its one of the many reasons why people really shouldn’t buy gift vouchers.
Thanks. I did hear something like this in the rumours after this new broke and I bitched and whinged to my work mates.
I will have to pen an email to PwC when we know more and see what or if I can recoup anything!
good article, it is sad to see jessops close, but like most other people i went there to look at goods and buy online,
i don’t even think i can see a way high street stores can keep going.
we own a florists (my wife runs it) the one biggest factor is rent, its astronomical, landlords are abysmal and are asking for massive rent increases, even though the high street and business cant afford it, (we need to move our shop in march) the landlord wants 18k a year for a small shop, 3 years ago it was 10k, then 14k now he wants 18k and turn us into a fully repairing lease, which means we have to pay for all the neglect he has refused repair over the years so we have told him to go fuck himself.
there is still a recession on whatever the news says,
we break even each month – just
the government offer no help for small businesses
ohh they say we can help you borrow more money that you cant afford to pay back and that’s it,
its said to say that high streets are going to die, unless something can be done about rents and bureaucracy
and for what its worth if anyone here has ever used interflora, you do realise that interflora takes 33% of your money straight away so thats 33% less flowers you are getting, the best thing is find a florist that is local to the person you want to send flowers too (other relay companies aren’t quite as bad) and yes we are an intrflora member so am not slagging off the competition.
also when you look at a design on the website, interflora usually add extra filler to make it look better
Hope your florist survives and flourishes
I couldn’t agree more about High Street rentals, it’s absolutely ridiculous, I recently looked at a very small unit (under 20 sq m) near (not in) a train station (I wanted to put a small popcorn, donut and candyfloss stand there) and it was £20K per year plus business rates so I was looking at £30K odd before any other costs like staff etc….£600 per week just to open the door, madness!
its the fact we keep 7 people off the dole that would hurt more if we closed down, but we could do without the stress involved in running a business these days, and to be honest working for someone else is much easier all round. we wont run another business if this closes down
I was looking at initially employing three 16-20 year olds (it’s not rocket science making and selling these snacks) which would have helped reduce the NEET’s in our general area.
Personally I don’t mind running businesses, although dealing with staff is my biggest headache but I prefer to diversify my income sources rather than be reliant on one.
Ridiculous rents and business rates are why there’s charity shops popping up everywhere. The pet shop I work in is just around the corner from the local high street which helps keep our costs down. The business itself moved from a smaller premises on a main road into the one we’re currently in and we tripled our floorspace while reducing our rent and rates. We moved no more than 200m. If we were to move across the road into a slightly smaller retail unit, our rates would double, and our rent would quadruple, then we’d go out of business. And the local council wonders why so many shops are sitting empty.
That thing with charity shops – what exactly do they have that others don’t? Do they get some benefits against rent rates?
I ‘believe’ that if you rent a retail unit to a registered charity for less than market rate you can write it off when it comes to taxes and most charities themselves are more than happy to spend a large amount of money paying Chief Execs and other managerial staff some serious salaries.
Yep. If a space is sitting empty, the owners are still expected to pay business rates on it unless its undergoing heavy rennovation or its derelict. So letting a charity use it benefits everyone (aside from the council) – they don’t pay rates so they get free/cheap space, and the owner uses it as a tax writeoff and avoids paying empty rates
Charities don’t pay business rates, or at least get them heavily discounted.
Well written story, and unfortunately very similar to other stories of companies going down. The managers are supposed to manage, but most of them have never worked in a store before, and many have come straight from other industries. I hope everything turns around for the staff who work there.
And personally if I had just spend £3000 on a camera and you were telling me I couldn’t have it, but are not giving me a refund either, I think I would be burning the shop down.
I wonder what the implications are for forcibly taking back your repair or whatever? I don’t mean harm anyone, I just mean “This belongs to me, and you’ve been paid in full; good day to you.”. I suppose security doors and things would nip that in the bud, but if you could walk into Jessops, find your camera that the repair has been paid, and walk out, would you be arrested, and what for?
I’m starting to think I’m asking a very stupid question. Where’s that blimmin’ DeLito when you need him.
I think this makes perfect sense. If you can prove its yours, then take it back. Surely its not theft.
Like I mentioned above. £160 of cash was given to Jessops in exchange for vouchers. That cash is legal tender, but now its in the hand of the creditors its technically not cash… well, not in my pocket, but in the pocket of a rich PwC CEO or Jessops CEO who I’m pretty sure wont go hungry!!
If it were my physical property I would camp out in the store until the police came, or hell, ring the police from the store and tell them there has been a theft…
I hope everything works out for you in the long run, with or without Jessops.
I do feel sorry for Jessops, I received some really good advice from an advisor in there who actually talked me into buying a cheaper camera to the one I came in for but one which definitely suited my needs better.
I don’t usually have a lot of sympathy for stores losing business online (games, dvd’s and books are the same anywhere) but I imagine the vast majority of people who have bought an expensive camera online have tested them out on the high street first. In those cases the store is effectively acting as a showroom and subsidising the low-running costs of online businesses.
So much can change in less than 48 hours! I’m jobless, but I have a psychological relief that the torment I go through at work doesn’t exist anymore.
I bought my DSLR in store
LCE though not Jessops :p
Good. I won’t knock anyone who helps retail out, doesn’t matter how much anyone likes free delivery. When a consumer wants something, they want it fast. That the exact reason most websites have priority shipping services. You cant beat the walk in, walk out service.
Never even heard of them.
Ba-doom…tish?
No I’ve never even heard of that shop, never seen one or had any interest in cameras for that matter. More of a female thing, they love taking pictures of everything but guys aren’t sentimental like that. I couldn’t image a woman walking into a tech shop though, they’re so clueless most of the time and normally just buy whatever is cheap online.
Maybe I’ve just never seen them because all the major shops died years ago and all the smaller shops that were dying to the major ones are coming back again. Everyone young is buying online and the old timers are going back to their local community shops.
Don’t you at least have one in your town?
Wow, you’re patronising. If women aren’t buying pom the high street, its for much the same reason men are – because people don’t know their stuff. When I last bought a compact and was asking what ratio the macro was, nobody knew, and I would have people trying to sell me the camera purely on the basis of megapixellage, or because ‘it’s pink and slim’. I’m a right pain on the arse consumer who knows my rights and realises when someone is bullshitting me into a sale (cosmetic counters are a fine example), most customers aren’t knowlegable or confident enough to do so, and in many cases the high street know it.
I can’t necessarily say that porn is comparable to cameras or boutiques. But I see your point, my only disagreement with it is that whilst every consumer is different, they always want the same thing. Optimum value for money, so whilst your argument stands for making sure both parties understand your rights as a consumer, knowledge isn’t the only part of looking for a product. It makes more sense to buy something face to face from someone to let them sell it to you, literally sell it to you. Tell you exactly why you need it, not want it. Fair enough, whatever bumbling tool didn’t answer the question about macro and stereotyped you for your gender is a prick, but that said if he had explored you in a much more indepth way, you probably would of seen the fact that the camera was pink as just something else to convince you to buy it.
Are you from some parallel universe where there are no Jessops and it’s ok to be nasty to women?
who ARE you?!
You’re not missing out..
I bought my first DSLR from Jessops about 6 years ago, after price matching it on Cameras2u, which turned out to be owned by Jessops, and saved myself £100.
At the time I thought what they were doing seemed quite cunning; they had two sites with non-jessops names, Cameras2u and shopping4cameras or something, which at the time seemed to always have the lowest price, and then they had the high street stores, which consistently had some of the highest prices…so they managed to get both the thrifty business and the ‘walk in and get advice’ business. By the looks of it though, I’m guessing this hasn’t worked out in the long run…
You have my sympathies mate, I hope it works out for you.
It hasn’t worked out, but I always think of this kind of situation as just a shit time that I go through. I know I’ll have a point in my career where I’ll look back and think that I am thankful for the experience, but that won’t be for a while. I’m making more of an advance on my photography career now, so I’ll administer your hope to that
Yeah, sorry for the kiss of death there
That store in the photo is my old store, Jessops Birmingham. In fact I should point out that it was the largest of the three Birmingham city centre stores. I worked at Jessops for 3 years during my University studies.
To give you some back story on Jessops and why some people passionately hated the store you I’ll explain how Jessops came to have so many stores in one city centre. Jessops was once a small and specialist retailer that focused on cameras and printing. The staff where mostly photographers or trained lab techs with a passion for darkrooms but with the rise of compact and simpler camera systems Jessops found more and more of its profits coming from the casual passing market. More film being developed by regular people than by photographers. This was the key turning point for Jessops. It was when money came flooding in as Jessops found it could satisfy the casual market with less overheads, costs and outlay. The average Joe didn’t care about print quality as much as the traditional audience, which meant cheaper developing and helped Jessops rapidly expand against rivals that stuck to their core market.
Jessops then began buying up rival stores and outlets. Either rebranding them or closing them down. The compact market was a boom for Jessops. This was before large supermarkets really pushed developing and camera sales where mostly out of specialist shops.
This left the core audience of Jessops feeling left out, that they where no longer catered for. The new market of casual photography consumers where more interested in price than quality. The slow turn over from photographers to the general market meant a scaling back on SLRs, 2nd hand and trained staff. There was no need to keep that stock or hire expensive and informative staff when people just wanted a single use camera or APS model.
When digital came about this opened up new rivals for Jessops in non traditional sectors. Everyone could sell digital camera. People weren’t looking for a photography retailer, they wanted digital specialists.
Jessops had now over expanded and found it hard to compete with stores like ASDA etc who offered digital cameras at knock down prices. It had to keep its inflated prices where possible to turn a profit. It also lacked the buying power it once had with stockists. It could get deals but no where as good as the large supermarket chains.
The buy in costs for equipment where high and the profits slim after all the over heads. Staff training was cut back. Those that did know about the equipment did only because they researched out of their own passions and interest.
This is where the problem came. The Jessops stores where geared towards a casual market, more price sensitive than the specialist sector. Not only that but the retail locations where on the high street and expensive. This lead to massive mark ups on smaller products that Jessops could buy larger amounts off.
The online market made this problem worse. I could go on but that is a bit of a back story to why people took a dislike to Jessops. They panicked and turned their back on the photographers to focus on Dixon’s style practices. Insurance, higher purchase and add ons.
You are like a prophet. Thank you for the expansion, definitely puts the article and situation in perspective.
No you Jessie are the prophet https://www.facebook.com/BhamUpdates/posts/492619974121411
RIP HMV indeed, may I also wish you well in finding a new job.
Its a shame people could lose their jobs over this but I think its about time people stopped shopping at stores that rip you off. Oh and the store where I live, the staff, have little to no idea about the products they are selling. The high street needs to step its game up
It’s a case of damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Someone WAS only trying to support a community and offer amazing customer service but then the pen pushers waved in and fucked the game up.
ive worked for pc world for the last 4 years while at university and its a similar story, u can give the best customer service and advice but if ( as we call them ) the deal is flat and is just say a laptop on its on, then the managers aren’t pleased. it has got better over the years but they need to realise alot of people are clued up on what they want to buy. sad to see another store go
Well, as of 4:30pm today I am unemployed basically.
Took less than 48 hours from administration, to closure.
I appreciate everyones comments, it’s nice to know everyone has an opinion on it.
Good luck in the search for a new job.
What I can’t understand is why there was so little time between admin and shop closure. There must be a huge amount of unsold stock somewhere.
Thats what I was thinking, but it turns out the suppliers pulled out of trading with us. They want their shit back basically.
i work for currys. sorry to see another retailer go. just found it weird that you guys call it a “naked” sale, exactly the same as us!
We don’t call it a naked sale, our managers call it a naked sale. We call it a ballache/earache/headache.. Whatever ache gets on your nerves the most.
As someone who worked for Jessops for a year, you have my sympathy. They were probably the most inept big company I’ve ever worked for, and I too absolutely hated selling people hugely overpriced accessories.
Most people we got in the store would come in and get our advice, then say something like, “Thanks, that was very helpful. I’m going to go buy it on Amazon because it’s cheaper”, which, on the one hand, would make you kind of angry that you’d just wasted your time (as far as the company is concerned), but on the other hand you couldn’t help but think that you’d do the same.
My experience of Jessops could probably be summed up with the experience of the regional manager only ever appeared to tell us how bad we were, how we weren’t doing well enough. This, despite the fact that we were consistently in the top 5 stores for profitability in the entire company.
How to kill off the high street, in three easy steps:
1. Create a mass market chain of stores which undercuts all competition through low margins, badly paid staff and tax avoidance.
2. Create a public convinced that the price is more important than anything else, including human interaction and know-how. All that matters is whether you can buy your stuff cheaper than elsewhere.
3. Introduce online shopping, which is by definition cheaper than anything the big networks can offer.
Optional point 4: Bemoan “death of high street” as the cheap-but-not-as-cheap-as-online crappy chain shops begin to close down…
Nah, you can do it as easily as this.
Step 1; Prioritise over money.
Unfortunately many of the big chains have had their heads in the sand for far too long; it pretty clear the writing’s been on the wall for a long time. As things began to tighten in retail they haven’t look to change sufficiently. Instead they’ve put increasing pressure on diminishing front-line staff to achieve the imposible selling overpriced product and attach.
Retailers have to look at the bigger picture and consider technological trends and consumer behaviour to stay relevant, and if necessary radically re-invent themselves. Whether that be focusing on the affluent shopper with amazing customer service such as John Lewis, becoming more specialised, or just stocking deals and piling the store high with boxes in cheaper locations such as Richer Sounds.
It’s a sad state of affairs for UK retail, hopefully some indies will get a lift, but they’ll continue to struggle without the buying power of the multiples.