Jessops Comeback?

I hear on the grapevine that Jessops could be making a comeback as a physical retailer once more. Peter Jones bought Jessops (name, trademarks, website etc..) but not its debt of course. They are planning (I say planning cause it may not happen still) to open a handfull of shops around the UK in key areas (probably based on the stores that did the most turnover/profit). We're talking no more than 20 stores. A head office will exist but the company will not be ran by the head office like the old Jessops, this is partly the reason the company went under as head office and directors didn't really have a clue how the shops were doing on a individual basis. They thought that they could roll out marketing schemes and plans across an entire company when really they needed to look more at individual stores and listen to their staff instead of ignoring them.. anyways i'll stop getting off topic

The responsibility will be somewhat handed back to the managers of each store, sales staff will probably have more input than ever before, the feedback they give to their managers will ultimately change the way each store runs. A manager will be able to truly manage a store once again, they'll possibly be responsible for buying, branding, promotions, offers, making deals and once again becoming a competitive high street retailer. One of the problems that the old Jessops had was that managers were there only to hire and fire and organise their sales staff, long gone were the days where they had to run a shop like it was their own business and their own money but the plan that are currently being discussed will give this responsibility back to the managers, each store will almost become its own self contained business not a franchise by any means but that person in charge will either make or break that store, hopefully make!

The locations are still in discussion, they won't have 187 stores scattered about racking up huge running costs with thousands of staff but instead they will concentrate on running a handfull of stores and grow the business slowly and of course they'll have the website back and will hopefully be more competitive.

What they need to do is get the manufactures on side and make sure that places like Amazon don't sell things at 5% markup (stack them high sell them cheap) regulation needs to be employed and everyone should get a fair deal, both retailer and consumer.

Anyways lets see what happens, like I said at the start, its only in the planning stage at the moment, it may never happen. I'd like to see it happen though as the nearest place that deals in mid to pro end camera gear near me is 100 miles away, pro dealerships are hard to come by these days and I don't like buying without talking it out with someone who should know and without being able to physically look at something, almost test it out before hand. Good job TFC is still about!!

H Man

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in the land of the blind the one eyed man is king