The management failed to adapt to anything. This must not have come as a surprise to them (the management), they must have known sales were down yet what did they do about it ?
Where was the big ad campaign, where were the promotions, the special offers, the price reductions ?
Fact is there was no big push to get more trade whilst overpaid executives sat on their arses and did fuck all whilst knowingly watch the company go down the pan. Same goes for Jessops, HMV and the rest. First we hear that there are problems is when they announce administration when we should have been hearing endless campaigns to generate business.
Then again when aforementioned execs are being paid £millions in wages and bonuses regardless of the state of the company do they really care what happens ? They just get paid £millions more as a golden handshake when the company folds and then move on to another highly paid role with another firm.
And I suppose that they're competing with web stores that don't have the overheads of maintaining a high street footprint has got nothing to do with it?
of course it does, but I have always found HMV & Blockbuster to not only be expensive but to also be more expensive than other high st shops
we went into HMV just after xmas with £300+ to spend on a PS3 and some games, it took nearly 20 mins to find out they had nothing we wanted ~ they were willing to order stuff for delivery but I can do that myself for less
But it's as if they were'nt trying to compete with anyone.
For example, I can name off the top of my head half a dozen sites where I can download music from, HMV isn't one of them. In fact I don't even know if you can D/L direct from HMV, I presume you can but maybe you can't.
And there's the problem, if you can D/L from HMV why are'nt they shouting about it - the cost would be comparable to all the other sites so why would I not consider it an option ?
But it's not just digital downloads, where were the adverts screaming buy one get one free, or half price sale. Where were the TV ads, the e-mail spam, the newspaper and magazine ads ? Surely they could have offered software and games at the same price as Amazon, ok not on the high street but at least online, and made it as easy to order as Amazon do.
But let's not forget that throughout the nineties before the explosion of internet ordering the likes of HMV were happy to charge £12 for a CD when you could get exactly the same in the US for £6, and when internet shopping became commonplace they continued to charge the higher price and then wondered why they lost out on sales when it was still cheaper to import from overseas than buy from them, even with tax and import duty.
Like I said HMV didn't try to compete with anyone else, they made shedloads of money off us in the 90's and as other retailers adapted and lowered their prices HMV thought they could continue as they always had and charge the same price for products that could be got cheaper elsewhere.
And it's not as if they could'nt compete on price. A few years back I wanted the latest COD game, my local independant game store was selling for £30, Tescos for £28 - all sold out. Went into Blockbuster and they had plenty of copies but for £40 ! If a small independant can sell for £30 then why not Blockbuster with their buying power ? I could stand a couple of quids difference but £10, so that was one sale they lost - and I never went back since.
Atari hasn't been Atari for at least 10 years, probably more.
Ignoring the fact that they're currently owned by Infogrames, the US arm of Atari is completely unrelated to the Atari of olde. All they share in common is the name.
bastard by name
