Wittards of Chelsea Gone Bust

fc123

drc wrote: »

Maybe, but if you only cater to one specific niche and that niche is broke, who is going to buy your goods?

You find another niche. Niche is in the soul....it moves on and you do move with it.......you feel it.

I have sold niche for 2 decades and what I design / select has changed every 3 or 4 years.

Mind you...there's a lot of fake niche action going on out there too.....that probably won't endure...true niche always does.

fc123

lisaloo1977 wrote: »

So basically after adding them, you are saying most of the stores on the high street!!!

Do you have any evidence to back any of the names you are throwing around, or are you just practising for a job with sky news?

Not saying they wont, just think that people are talking places in to an early grave using heresay.

I just googled Bauger to get their list of links....it's gone.
From memory, in clothing they had shares in the following (either directly or indirectly with Kevin Stanford)

Hof F
Hamleys
Mosaic Fashion; Coast, K Millen, Whistles, Warehouse, Oasis, Nine west, Shoe studio (?) All Saints, Ghost (now sold to the actual manufacturer...woohoo! A Good Thing)
Jane Norman, Principles....ummm...Iceland food.

Plus Whittards, Julian Graves.

The Icelandic retail pyramid scheme has a lot more unravelling to go through.
In the trade press it seems Mosaic fashion will go into administartion and all the fascias will be sold off in chunks......the majority are good businesses.


Mosaic has debt equal to gross T/O. If my business had that level of debt, I would be pretty fooocked now.

jamescredmond

clobber wrote: »

I will be gutted if Waterstone's goes, as I live in the sort of grim provincial town where the only bookshops are Waterstone's and the Oxfam shop. Although Amazon is much cheaper, you can't browse, pick up books, and look at them online. I would really miss an actual bookshop.

As for the rest of them, I don't care. Laura Ashley do actually do nice party dresses but I really don't need any more of them.

agree with the waterstones bit, sort of.

their staff in my town are helpful, but the purchase power forced 2 (highly useful) indie bookshops out of business. I miss the old biddy behind the counter correcting me A-Z. she was all tweedy/formidable and immensely knowledgeable. God bless this woman. too bad she and her shop are no longer around.

Sapphire

Not sure whether Waterstones or W.H. Smiths are about to go under. I was in both shops yesterday and the day before, and there were enormous queues in them.

Both chains do carry a lot of goods that are relatively inexpensive in price and actually useful. This cannot be said (for example) of the myriad clothing shops around at the moment, which flourished during the boom, when so many people were buying on borrowed money. I think only the best of these will survive – upmarket shops as well as downmarket ones.

Horasio

I did wonder when they stopped selling Peach and Apple Crumble tea bags:(

Managed to get some from an outlet shop.

markelock

PasturesNew wrote: »

I've used M&S for bras in the past. But that's all. The rest of their stuff was too pricey.

I did try to buy a suit for a job interview there the other year, I went in and asked for their Petite section and they said "tell us which suit you want to buy and we'll get it sent in, we don't have petite in stock". Which wasn't any good. I wouldn't know if it fitted or suited me ... and it'd have meant a wait and another big trek out to try it.

When I set out that day to find a suit, I assumed "If all else fails, I'll be able to get a functional/smart suit in M&S" but I was wrong!

I find their mens suits quite good. bra's less so. you can always see the wires behind my ties.

M&S will be fine. I can guarantee it*



*not a guarantee.

Scousebird_2

Waterstones is part of the HMV Group and they're not going anywhere anytime soon!

fc123

Waterstones and Borders were absolutely packed today.

I have been trying to find The Midas Plague (as recommended on here) and Amazon didn't have it when I searched.
The very helpful man in Borders looked it up....and found a used copy on Amazon, printed off the info for me then told me he always used Amazon for searches for Borders customers.

I love bookshops...it's the smell. I feel bad as I haven't had the time to go to the Indie one in Kemptown this winter...and I spent the £££ on Amazon and in Waterstones instead.

I feel really bad about this but I haven't got enough time at the mo.....will they still be there when I get some free time back???

Geenie

I would be sad to see Laura Ashley go.........have [strike]happy[/strike] embarrassing memories of being a bridesmaid wearing a high, frilled neck, puffed sleeved long dress of theirs in 1980, pink, with a sprig design that was all the rage at the time if I remember correctly!!:eek:

They have survived blips before, so hopefully will come through this. They DO need an overhaul though and new designers in tune with their target market.

Waterstones are brilliant for my kids at Uni. They can get all their heavy course work stuff there much better then Amazon, and can see before they buy. Perhaps this is their strength and not trying to compete with Amazon on the general, fluffy stuff like Nigella cook books?!!

M&S have been dire for years.

nic_santorini

something definitely happened to Whittards in Bluewater last week. Went to go into the shop at 1000 am and they closed the shutters even though there were customers. Very strange I thought. As for the Pier - there was hardly any stock left. I q'd to get in last week and if my house was not so blooming small I would have loved to buy their quality furniture, it was giveaway prices. Boo hoo. Oh well at least I have a roof over my head, so can't complain too much. If currys go, that will be PC World too because I bought a laptop last week and PC World said they own currys too and they were in fact the same shop, along with dixons. He said they all do the same offers but it is not necessarily advertised, so there is actually no point in going store to store and he showed me on the computer system he had, had access to all the deals in PC World, Currys and Dixons at the touch of a button.