Industry heads says true victims of Woolies and EUK collapse are yet to be revealed
Today’s closing down sale represents what is probably the last hurrah for the UK’s celebrated Woolworths brand – but top retail figures in the UK games industry have warned that there’s still bad news to come.
“Take someone like Woolies out of the retail equation and you’re looking at a potential tidal wave,” CHIPS joint boss Don McCabe told MCV. “It’s about how people deal with that tidal wave. What about some of the smaller publishers who’ve got stock in EUK, Woolworths and associated retailers? What happens to them if payments are a little bit held up, or even non-existent? Even if they end up getting the stock back, how much value will it have lost? This ripple is where the real worry is.”
And one anonymous UK publisher boss is even more concerned: “Woolworths’ first sale didn’t really touch their bigger ticket items such as games. At some stage during this clearance sale they’re going to change that. You can’t compete with thievery, and that stock has effectively been stolen. Consumers are going to get a bargain, but no other retailer will be able to match the discounts and a lot of other businesses are going to fold because of this.”
For an in-depth look at the potential affects on the UK games market, click here.
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Comments
woolies
Feel sad for the many loyal staff who have kept this place going for so long.
shame on the buying team for selling the new releases at cost price then bumping the prices up after about a week.
most places do it the other way round people will pay the higher price when game just released.
i feel that kind of madness has caused them to lose the plot in there games area.
Re: woolies
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article5327650.ece" onclick="window.open ( this.href ); return false;" class="comment_url" >http://business.ti...0.ece
Started already
Re: woolies
Very shameful. The EUK and Woolies buying team should never be allowed to work in our industry again. In any other circumstances, they would be in Jail for day light robbery!
Re: Re: woolies
The retail prices have nothing to do with Euk buying teams. Thats down to the individual retail outlets. Afterall, they're just a disty. Do Centresoft dictate yr retail prices? thought not.
Re: Re: Re: woolies (Theo)
Wrong Theo.
EUK only supplied to exclusive set of Retailers. They were in bed with those retailers. Most of the retailers they worked with it was EUK buyers who set the buying and selling price. Comparison with C'Soft is incorrect.
Re: Re: Re: Re: woolies (Theo)
Not True - Your name is entirely appropriate for your comments. As buyers we had no idea of what price our retailers were going to be selling titles for until a couple of days before release, if that, and certainly had nothing to with setting them, nor anyone else at EUK. To do otherwise would have had pretty great legal implications.
EUK may have done many dis-services to the UK entertainment industry, but you've managed to pick on something we certainly didn't do.
I remember during my time working for a customer always thinking EUK were useless and generally rubbish, but having spent the last 21 months (why couldn't they have held on to March so I could have got some redundancy) working there I'd say that we hurt ourselves the most by taking on contracts with wafer thin margins in the fallout from Tescos leaving, putting us in a very tough position trying to screw extra margin out of suppliers.
Please at least try to take an informed position before spouting your self centred opinion in future.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: woolies (Theo)
It will have implications, there'll be no dozy shop staff to scratch the hell out of your discs at the counter anymore.
ask
What are you going to call woolworths I got a ideal treatworths
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