SRS is closing down

I bought much of my stuff from SRS - always thought it was an amazing shop. Very sad to hear of its demise

Sign of the times sadly. Cambrian is still very much alive but the days when customers were 4 deep awaiting service are long gone, and as I have mentioned in a reply Chiswick have merged with Teddington (for the time being).

Park Cameras in London seems to be doing fine. I was there recently - lots of stock and people in the store.

I went to SRS yesterday to pick-up my repaired lens. They gave me a pile of Pentax-branded "merch": a leather briefcase, stress balls, sunglasses, never-ending pencils and a SD-USB adaptor. All very sad to see them clearing the store, but kind of them to give me some stuff.

According to accounts filed in Companies House, Park Cameras is a medium size company, SRS was a small company (as defined by the Companies Act). The numbers in their accounts (employees, net assets etc.) imply that Park Cameras is at least 10 times bigger than SRS was. Are we seeing that when there is significant stress in the camera (etc.) market, a smaller company is more vulnerable than a bigger company?

FWIW my local small photographic shop, small shop in a tourist town, will sell you a camera or lens but has little in stock and makes their money from accessories (camera bags, photo frames etc.), consumables (including film), prints etc. It's also part of a local group of small photographic shops, which might help with resilience (sharing resources, overheads etc.).

Steve

I just mentioned Park Cameras as a they are still in business if we need a real shop.

And they give good service, too - I've recently bought a few things from them via their website .

Steve