News at the start of this week that two of the biggest remaining high-street brands - HMV and Jessops - have gone into liquidation. At the end of the week, they were followed by Blockbusters.
Jessops sold cameras, telescopes and binoculars; HMV was a music store and Blockbusters was video and games rental. All three are victims of a changing market and of that market moving online.
It’s an issue that also affects publishing and when I was regional director for Northcliffe Electronic Publishing, I used to give a talk to newspaper editors and advertising executives entitled Why Isn’t There an Airline Called Cunard?
The message I wanted to get across was that the nature of markets may change, but needs change less so. Cunard was a key player in transporting people around the world. When my Great Aunt Annie went to California to visit friends in 1963, she went by Cunard liner from Southampton. Back then, that was the way to do it, but people still need to cross the Atlantic (more than ever, in fact) and if Aunt Annie went today, she’d fly with Virgin or British Airways.
Why didn’t Cunard see that the market was moving from ships to aeroplanes and start investing in air travel? Perhaps it saw itself as a ship-owner (which it was) but should have seen itself as a service provider and concentrated on providing the service - travel - in the way that people wanted to consume it. If it had, it could have levered its brand trust and value into an airline and become the leading player in an expanded travel market.
Newspapers were (and some still are) in the same mind-set as Cunard. Bosses thought they were newspaper publishers but didn’t realise that they were really information providers and that the newspaper was simply a good way for people to consume that information at a point in time. So the focus remained on printing and selling newspapers far longer than it should have done. If all the money spent on presses and promotion in the past 15 years had been spent on IT, then mainstream media (the traditional newspaper publishers) would be in a healthier state than they are now.
I once said to the MD at Bristol that rather than installing new presses, he should buy everyone in Bristol a PC and internet access. he thought I was joking, but we could easily have done a deal with Hewlett-Packard (based in Bristol) plus Telewest, the cable company, and Bristol would have become the digital capital of the UK. Instead, he spent millions on new presses, which were scrapped 10 years later and the paper is now printed in Swindon, 50 miles away.
It’s somewhat ironic therefore that Simon Fox, former chief executive of HMV and the man charged with turning that business around, was appointed chief executive of Trinity-Mirror (one of the UK’s biggest regional newspaper groups) last August. Let’s hope that his current strategic thinking has been enriched by his experience at HMV.
It would have been so easy for HMV to do what Amazon or iTunes have done and I should now be buying my music through their online store. What online store, you ask - exactly! I’ve been buying music all my life and I’m buying more music now than ever before and I suspect other people are too. It’s almost criminal that HMV should fail as a music seller in a market where more and more music is being consumed.
It’s an interesting (or perhaps not) journey through technology to look at how I’ve consumed music over the past 50-odd years. The first record I bought was a 78rpm disc of A Slow Boat to China by Emile Ford and the Checkmates. I bought it from Dawsons, which was next to the library in High Street, Northwich, and it was very exciting. It must have been around 1960 and we’d been given a second-hand radio and record player, which I soon claimed pretty much as my own. Before then, we’d had a wind-up gramophone which came from my grandfather and had never been used. It was in a wooden cabinet with a lid that lifted to reveal a turntable operated by a wind-up spring. This would once have driven a large paper speaker which sat in the cabinet below. When you wanted to listen to music, you wound it up put a record on and opened the doors. A diaphragm in the pick-up would have transferred sound waves to the main speaker and you’d have been able to dance around the room. At some stage, my grandfather had replaced the old acoustic pick-up with an electric one and installed an electric amplifier and speaker in the space where the paper speaker had been. By the time we got it, this had all been removed; it was used as a TV stand and, because the TV sat on top, it was only years later that I discovered the turntable and grandad’s Heath Robinson conversion. We still have it today. It is in my hall by the front door with a china washing bowl on the top. Two bits of redundant technology put to ornamental use. If only grandad had kept the gramophone intact, we might have had a valuable antique.
The new (new to us) device was a radiogram - a radio and gramophone combined. It was electric and in perfect working order, but it only played 78rpm records and I guess someone had given it to my dad because they were upgrading to a new record player with a multi-speed turntable. It was a nice piece in a strong wooden case and came with a radio which had LW, MW and SW settings.
To play a record, you switched on the turntable and placed the pick-up arm onto the record by hand. When it finished playing, you had to jump up and switch it off, otherwise it made a dreadful din as it ran into the centre groove and just ‘looped’. The sound was fingernails scratched across a blackboard! The needles were like thick sewing needles with no eye and I guess they were made of brass. You bought them in a tin containing 50 or more and you had to change them about every 10 records because they became blunt and sound quality suffered.
I used my pocket money to buy records regularly, always 78s, and there was a seminal event when my sister got a free Cliff Richard record with her teen-mag (Boyfriend, or something). It was much smaller than the standard record and also made from flexible plastic. We were baffled and had to wait until dad came in to sort it out. I think he must have been just as baffled, but he put it on the record player, put the needle down and suddenly Cliff Richard sounded like Pinky and Perky or Alvin and the Chipmunks on speed.
The free record was a 45rpm disc and we’d got a 78rpm turntable! My sister got a Dansette record player later that year and the old radiogram was mine. I listened to Children’s Favourites on the Light Programme on Saturday morning and when Peter Roberts and I were playing space explorers, twisting the tuning dial on SW provided a realistic sound-effect for crossing deep space.
In Northwich, Dawson’s was where people bought their records and when I first went in, it sold a combination of instruments, lots of sheet music and a section for records, which gradually took more and more space from the sheet music. Almost every Saturday, I’d go to the library to change my books, then the pocket money was blown either on a record or a new Airfix model.
Later, 78s were less and less available and I got an HMV record player with multi-change. You could stack up to 10 records in the middle on a long spindle and set it to play. When it finished the record, the arm automatically lifted and retracted; a toggle allowed the next record to drop and it set off again. It was a mechanical marvel, but wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes two records dropped instead of one, sometimes the record stuck and didn’t drop properly, sometimes when there was a full stack, the arm couldn’t quite go high enough to play the last record.
Theoretically, it would work with LPs as well as singles, but that was even more unreliable. You could also lift the arm on top of the stack and push it to one side so it would keep playing the same record over and over. The HMV had a great tone and would play 75, 45 and 33rpm records. It also had a diamond stylus, which lasted for a year or more before quality went off.
My record buying extended into LPs as I got older and instead of Dawson’s, we moved to a new record shop, White and Swales, further along the high street. This had more choice and also listening booths where you could ask an assistant to play you a record while you stood in the sound booth. For a 14-year-old, this presented a world of wonder and embarrassment. Imagine me in my croaking, breaking voice asking the 18-year-old shop-girl, all back-combed hair and heavy eye make-up to play You Were Made For Me by Freddie and The Dreamers. Imagine the bored nonchelance, the scornful look (I should have asked for the latest Stones’ record), the self-conscious walk to the appointed booth, the record which seemed to last for 30 minutes (should I have a little dance, tap my feet, nod my head) then the walk back to the counter. The assistant would be talking to an older boy, smiling ... laughing and I had to say that I’d like the Freddie and The Dreamers record please (cue sniggers all round).
Sometimes it would be too much and you just had to run for it. Alan Bennett would have savoured the moment, knowing there was material for a scene in a book or a play in years to come. I had no such pay-back - just Freddie and a dream or two.
Sometimes there were bargains to be had in Woolworth’s (another defunct high street brand). They sold cheap records under their own brand - Embassy - that were either by less popular bands and artists or cover versions by session musicians. Some are probably collectors’ items now. I didn’t really appreciate a proper, dedicated record shop until I moved to Peterborough and there was Andy’s Records in Bridge Street.
The HMV record player lasted over 10 years until I was married and living in Warrington when Margaret and I bought a second-hand radiogram for about £20. This was my first stereophonic experience. I think it was made by Fidelity and it was a real piece of furniture - as big as a sideboard and with a radio, record player and room to store some records. It was a revelation. I was hearing parts of records that I’d never heard before; new chimes appeared on Tubular Bells and subtle chords on Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Variations that had been missing previously. It was as if I’d been deaf and now I could hear. The radiogram stayed with us until we moved to Thorney and I replaced it with separate pieces - a Sansui deck (no autoplay!), Hitachi 30watt amp and Hitachi tape deck and two massive, brilliant Celestion speakers. Later I added a CD player, ditched the tape deck, upgraded the amp and replaced those brilliant speakers with some tiny Kef speakers and a bass bin to stop Margaret’s carping. Small speakers is one of the compromises you have to make in marriage.
I replaced, replicated and added to my record collection with CD versions; then, when broadband arrived and iTunes was launched, I did it all over again with MP3 files. Now, I spend more on music than ever before and I never touch the stereo. We run everything through my old iPod or Margaret’s iPod Touch. I’ll probably move on to Spotify eventually.
I’m particularly sorry to see Jessop’s go because I’ve bought three cameras and a pair of binoculars from them and I’ve always had a good experience. They sold me a really nice Nikon compact which had a brilliant little lens. When that was stolen while travelling Europe in the care of Tom and Sam, they sold me an Olympus Miu and when film became redundant, that was replaced with a digital version. Staff were knowledgeable and prepared to spend time with you and let you be hands-on with the products.
We used Blockbusters for a short period of time. We were introduced to video recorders/players in around 1985 when we went to stay with Margaret’s brother Phil and his then wife Carmen in Weymouth. Phil had a Betamax format video player and later we bought a VHS.
We started using a video rental store in Whittlesey and later, when the children were older, we’d go to Lincoln Road in Peterborough. Saturday night treat was pizza and a video rental, we’d order the pizza and then go to Blockbusters to choose a video while the pizza was cooking. There was always a heated debate about what we’d have!
I find it hard to mourn the passing of HMV. They were focused on shops when they should have moved online and their high street retailer mindset also prevented them from going niche and specialist with expert staff to serve a smaller market. Why isn’t there a Spotify-type app called HMV?
Jessops haven’t done much wrong. They’ve been hit by the fact that almost every phone and all smart-phones now have very good cameras; also online retailing and comparison sites where you can read recommendations and then find the best price. It’s made a commodity out of a luxury, highly engineered product, but what could they have done to survive? Perhaps they could be a brand under the Amazon umbrella, perhaps you could talk to someone online and still benefit from genuine advice and recommendation rather than a slew of unqualified opinion some to be trusted, some not.
Blockbuster boomed on a shift in technology and they should have realised that was going to be short-lived. They have tried to move their business online, but they’ve been up against powerful multinationals such as Apple, where the maker of the “VCR” has also become a retailer of the video and the device is geared up to steer users towards its own products. It’s sad, but Blockbusters could never have a future as a high-street retailer. However, the pizza and video experience on a Saturday night wouldn’t be the same scrolling through the Netflix catalogue while waiting for dial-a-pizza to arrive.
Who’s next? Newsagents are under threat as newspaper sales shrink and magazines move towards tablet apps, Booksellers have already been hit by the growth of e-readers and are likely to be hit further.
I buy lots of things online and I’ve got a Kindle. I’d probably use Netflix if I had more time to watch TV and a half-decent broadband connection. I would miss the high street though, I enjoy browsing and actually physically buying something. There are already so many empty shops, even in busy cities. There will be lots more in years to come and definitely not enough charity and pound shops to fill the gap. Rather than building over the green belt, perhaps it’s time to knock down a few shops and build houses and flats in the high street?
Jessops sold cameras, telescopes and binoculars; HMV was a music store and Blockbusters was video and games rental. All three are victims of a changing market and of that market moving online.
It’s an issue that also affects publishing and when I was regional director for Northcliffe Electronic Publishing, I used to give a talk to newspaper editors and advertising executives entitled Why Isn’t There an Airline Called Cunard?
The message I wanted to get across was that the nature of markets may change, but needs change less so. Cunard was a key player in transporting people around the world. When my Great Aunt Annie went to California to visit friends in 1963, she went by Cunard liner from Southampton. Back then, that was the way to do it, but people still need to cross the Atlantic (more than ever, in fact) and if Aunt Annie went today, she’d fly with Virgin or British Airways.
Why didn’t Cunard see that the market was moving from ships to aeroplanes and start investing in air travel? Perhaps it saw itself as a ship-owner (which it was) but should have seen itself as a service provider and concentrated on providing the service - travel - in the way that people wanted to consume it. If it had, it could have levered its brand trust and value into an airline and become the leading player in an expanded travel market.
Newspapers were (and some still are) in the same mind-set as Cunard. Bosses thought they were newspaper publishers but didn’t realise that they were really information providers and that the newspaper was simply a good way for people to consume that information at a point in time. So the focus remained on printing and selling newspapers far longer than it should have done. If all the money spent on presses and promotion in the past 15 years had been spent on IT, then mainstream media (the traditional newspaper publishers) would be in a healthier state than they are now.
I once said to the MD at Bristol that rather than installing new presses, he should buy everyone in Bristol a PC and internet access. he thought I was joking, but we could easily have done a deal with Hewlett-Packard (based in Bristol) plus Telewest, the cable company, and Bristol would have become the digital capital of the UK. Instead, he spent millions on new presses, which were scrapped 10 years later and the paper is now printed in Swindon, 50 miles away.
It’s somewhat ironic therefore that Simon Fox, former chief executive of HMV and the man charged with turning that business around, was appointed chief executive of Trinity-Mirror (one of the UK’s biggest regional newspaper groups) last August. Let’s hope that his current strategic thinking has been enriched by his experience at HMV.
It would have been so easy for HMV to do what Amazon or iTunes have done and I should now be buying my music through their online store. What online store, you ask - exactly! I’ve been buying music all my life and I’m buying more music now than ever before and I suspect other people are too. It’s almost criminal that HMV should fail as a music seller in a market where more and more music is being consumed.
It’s an interesting (or perhaps not) journey through technology to look at how I’ve consumed music over the past 50-odd years. The first record I bought was a 78rpm disc of A Slow Boat to China by Emile Ford and the Checkmates. I bought it from Dawsons, which was next to the library in High Street, Northwich, and it was very exciting. It must have been around 1960 and we’d been given a second-hand radio and record player, which I soon claimed pretty much as my own. Before then, we’d had a wind-up gramophone which came from my grandfather and had never been used. It was in a wooden cabinet with a lid that lifted to reveal a turntable operated by a wind-up spring. This would once have driven a large paper speaker which sat in the cabinet below. When you wanted to listen to music, you wound it up put a record on and opened the doors. A diaphragm in the pick-up would have transferred sound waves to the main speaker and you’d have been able to dance around the room. At some stage, my grandfather had replaced the old acoustic pick-up with an electric one and installed an electric amplifier and speaker in the space where the paper speaker had been. By the time we got it, this had all been removed; it was used as a TV stand and, because the TV sat on top, it was only years later that I discovered the turntable and grandad’s Heath Robinson conversion. We still have it today. It is in my hall by the front door with a china washing bowl on the top. Two bits of redundant technology put to ornamental use. If only grandad had kept the gramophone intact, we might have had a valuable antique.
The new (new to us) device was a radiogram - a radio and gramophone combined. It was electric and in perfect working order, but it only played 78rpm records and I guess someone had given it to my dad because they were upgrading to a new record player with a multi-speed turntable. It was a nice piece in a strong wooden case and came with a radio which had LW, MW and SW settings.
To play a record, you switched on the turntable and placed the pick-up arm onto the record by hand. When it finished playing, you had to jump up and switch it off, otherwise it made a dreadful din as it ran into the centre groove and just ‘looped’. The sound was fingernails scratched across a blackboard! The needles were like thick sewing needles with no eye and I guess they were made of brass. You bought them in a tin containing 50 or more and you had to change them about every 10 records because they became blunt and sound quality suffered.
I used my pocket money to buy records regularly, always 78s, and there was a seminal event when my sister got a free Cliff Richard record with her teen-mag (Boyfriend, or something). It was much smaller than the standard record and also made from flexible plastic. We were baffled and had to wait until dad came in to sort it out. I think he must have been just as baffled, but he put it on the record player, put the needle down and suddenly Cliff Richard sounded like Pinky and Perky or Alvin and the Chipmunks on speed.
The free record was a 45rpm disc and we’d got a 78rpm turntable! My sister got a Dansette record player later that year and the old radiogram was mine. I listened to Children’s Favourites on the Light Programme on Saturday morning and when Peter Roberts and I were playing space explorers, twisting the tuning dial on SW provided a realistic sound-effect for crossing deep space.
In Northwich, Dawson’s was where people bought their records and when I first went in, it sold a combination of instruments, lots of sheet music and a section for records, which gradually took more and more space from the sheet music. Almost every Saturday, I’d go to the library to change my books, then the pocket money was blown either on a record or a new Airfix model.
Later, 78s were less and less available and I got an HMV record player with multi-change. You could stack up to 10 records in the middle on a long spindle and set it to play. When it finished the record, the arm automatically lifted and retracted; a toggle allowed the next record to drop and it set off again. It was a mechanical marvel, but wasn’t foolproof. Sometimes two records dropped instead of one, sometimes the record stuck and didn’t drop properly, sometimes when there was a full stack, the arm couldn’t quite go high enough to play the last record.
Theoretically, it would work with LPs as well as singles, but that was even more unreliable. You could also lift the arm on top of the stack and push it to one side so it would keep playing the same record over and over. The HMV had a great tone and would play 75, 45 and 33rpm records. It also had a diamond stylus, which lasted for a year or more before quality went off.
My record buying extended into LPs as I got older and instead of Dawson’s, we moved to a new record shop, White and Swales, further along the high street. This had more choice and also listening booths where you could ask an assistant to play you a record while you stood in the sound booth. For a 14-year-old, this presented a world of wonder and embarrassment. Imagine me in my croaking, breaking voice asking the 18-year-old shop-girl, all back-combed hair and heavy eye make-up to play You Were Made For Me by Freddie and The Dreamers. Imagine the bored nonchelance, the scornful look (I should have asked for the latest Stones’ record), the self-conscious walk to the appointed booth, the record which seemed to last for 30 minutes (should I have a little dance, tap my feet, nod my head) then the walk back to the counter. The assistant would be talking to an older boy, smiling ... laughing and I had to say that I’d like the Freddie and The Dreamers record please (cue sniggers all round).
Sometimes it would be too much and you just had to run for it. Alan Bennett would have savoured the moment, knowing there was material for a scene in a book or a play in years to come. I had no such pay-back - just Freddie and a dream or two.
Sometimes there were bargains to be had in Woolworth’s (another defunct high street brand). They sold cheap records under their own brand - Embassy - that were either by less popular bands and artists or cover versions by session musicians. Some are probably collectors’ items now. I didn’t really appreciate a proper, dedicated record shop until I moved to Peterborough and there was Andy’s Records in Bridge Street.
The HMV record player lasted over 10 years until I was married and living in Warrington when Margaret and I bought a second-hand radiogram for about £20. This was my first stereophonic experience. I think it was made by Fidelity and it was a real piece of furniture - as big as a sideboard and with a radio, record player and room to store some records. It was a revelation. I was hearing parts of records that I’d never heard before; new chimes appeared on Tubular Bells and subtle chords on Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s Variations that had been missing previously. It was as if I’d been deaf and now I could hear. The radiogram stayed with us until we moved to Thorney and I replaced it with separate pieces - a Sansui deck (no autoplay!), Hitachi 30watt amp and Hitachi tape deck and two massive, brilliant Celestion speakers. Later I added a CD player, ditched the tape deck, upgraded the amp and replaced those brilliant speakers with some tiny Kef speakers and a bass bin to stop Margaret’s carping. Small speakers is one of the compromises you have to make in marriage.
I replaced, replicated and added to my record collection with CD versions; then, when broadband arrived and iTunes was launched, I did it all over again with MP3 files. Now, I spend more on music than ever before and I never touch the stereo. We run everything through my old iPod or Margaret’s iPod Touch. I’ll probably move on to Spotify eventually.
I’m particularly sorry to see Jessop’s go because I’ve bought three cameras and a pair of binoculars from them and I’ve always had a good experience. They sold me a really nice Nikon compact which had a brilliant little lens. When that was stolen while travelling Europe in the care of Tom and Sam, they sold me an Olympus Miu and when film became redundant, that was replaced with a digital version. Staff were knowledgeable and prepared to spend time with you and let you be hands-on with the products.
We used Blockbusters for a short period of time. We were introduced to video recorders/players in around 1985 when we went to stay with Margaret’s brother Phil and his then wife Carmen in Weymouth. Phil had a Betamax format video player and later we bought a VHS.
We started using a video rental store in Whittlesey and later, when the children were older, we’d go to Lincoln Road in Peterborough. Saturday night treat was pizza and a video rental, we’d order the pizza and then go to Blockbusters to choose a video while the pizza was cooking. There was always a heated debate about what we’d have!
I find it hard to mourn the passing of HMV. They were focused on shops when they should have moved online and their high street retailer mindset also prevented them from going niche and specialist with expert staff to serve a smaller market. Why isn’t there a Spotify-type app called HMV?
Jessops haven’t done much wrong. They’ve been hit by the fact that almost every phone and all smart-phones now have very good cameras; also online retailing and comparison sites where you can read recommendations and then find the best price. It’s made a commodity out of a luxury, highly engineered product, but what could they have done to survive? Perhaps they could be a brand under the Amazon umbrella, perhaps you could talk to someone online and still benefit from genuine advice and recommendation rather than a slew of unqualified opinion some to be trusted, some not.
Blockbuster boomed on a shift in technology and they should have realised that was going to be short-lived. They have tried to move their business online, but they’ve been up against powerful multinationals such as Apple, where the maker of the “VCR” has also become a retailer of the video and the device is geared up to steer users towards its own products. It’s sad, but Blockbusters could never have a future as a high-street retailer. However, the pizza and video experience on a Saturday night wouldn’t be the same scrolling through the Netflix catalogue while waiting for dial-a-pizza to arrive.
Who’s next? Newsagents are under threat as newspaper sales shrink and magazines move towards tablet apps, Booksellers have already been hit by the growth of e-readers and are likely to be hit further.
I buy lots of things online and I’ve got a Kindle. I’d probably use Netflix if I had more time to watch TV and a half-decent broadband connection. I would miss the high street though, I enjoy browsing and actually physically buying something. There are already so many empty shops, even in busy cities. There will be lots more in years to come and definitely not enough charity and pound shops to fill the gap. Rather than building over the green belt, perhaps it’s time to knock down a few shops and build houses and flats in the high street?
Nice blog. I find it strange how people get so nostalgic about the high-street's largest retailers going belly-up. It's always a shame when people lose their jobs but it's just the wheels of the market turning.
ReplyDeleteOnce HMV and Jesspos were at the top of the food chain, gobbling up Andy's Records and Honest Colin's Cameras with ravenous hunger. Back then, we went to the big boys in favour of the independent retailers because they were cheaper. Now, we shop online instead of the high-street because it's cheaper. This really isn't rocket science.
Jessops didn't go out of business because "all smart-phones now have very good cameras". People are spending more on DSLRs than ever before. Look at men, I've spent thousands on camera equipment in the last year but the only slice of the pie Jessops got was £75 for a camera bag. The crumbs!
I liked Jessops but the simple fact was it always cheaper online, so I did. Often I'd save as much as 15-20 per cent by doing so.
I liked the idea of buying everybody in Bristol a computer instead of a new printing press.