The biggest issue for me was getting stock especially Pentax back in those days.
But after that I realised photographic retail was on the ropes when after leaving Jessops I visited the old Wolverhampton store back in about 2005. An ex colleague told me “ Pete, you remember the huge queues we used to have out the door for Dev and Print? “ “ Yes” I replied. “Well Pete, they’re all gone!” And then it dawned that many people had switched to digital but those digital cameras now needed no real specialist knowledge to either sell or operate. Boots were in there big time but then supermarkets like Asda also got in on the act. The days of needing specialist knowledge in a specialist shop for the man in the street was well and truly over.
Then the minimum wage legislation put paid to the concept of Jessops and others hiring masses of highly knowledgeable skivvies . I know, I was one of those and my knowledge made others an awful lot of money with me getting nowadays below minimum wage payslip.
Amazon and eBay have also come along, the first profiting out of retail employees knowledge (get it demoed in a shop then buy it off Amazon) . And eBay was the death-knell of the second hand camera market.
With these things coming together its no surprise camera shops have shut all up and down the country. It simply doesn’t pay any longer.
The biggest issue for me was getting stock especially Pentax back in those days.
But after that I realised photographic retail was on the ropes when after leaving Jessops I visited the old Wolverhampton store back in about 2005. An ex colleague told me “ Pete, you remember the huge queues we used to have out the door for Dev and Print? “ “ Yes” I replied. “Well Pete, they’re all gone!” And then it dawned that many people had switched to digital but those digital cameras now needed no real specialist knowledge to either sell or operate. Boots were in there big time but then supermarkets like Asda also got in on the act. The days of needing specialist knowledge in a specialist shop for the man in the street was well and truly over.
Then the minimum wage legislation put paid to the concept of Jessops and others hiring masses of highly knowledgeable skivvies . I know, I was one of those and my knowledge made others an awful lot of money with me getting nowadays below minimum wage payslip.
Amazon and eBay have also come along, the first profiting out of retail employees knowledge (get it demoed in a shop then buy it off Amazon) . And eBay was the death-knell of the second hand camera market.
With these things coming together its no surprise camera shops have shut all up and down the country. It simply doesn’t pay any longer.