Charlotte Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 I'm surprised Woolies has lasted this long to be honest - what do people buy in there apart from pick'n'mix and even that's too expensive. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyhawk Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 If you have kids, then Woolies is a life saver for last minute birthday party gifts and fancy dress! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michael Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 It was always the one stop shop in the small town I grew up in, at that point it was the main place you could spend your pocket money. Nice posters, matchbox cars, sweets, the latest music, a football etc. While you were doing all that your parents could pick up things like wallpaper, plates, random packs of tiny screws or a curtain rail... they seemed to sell everything. They lost their way for a while and then tried to claw back the one stop shop things, even more so with their attempts to emulate Argos and do a catalogue service too. By trying to be everything for everyone in a world where the average high street / shopping centre has a selection of specialists that cover all the same bases within metres of each other they became pointless and expensive. But no doubt the blame will be passed on to the people who download music. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc_p Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 The furniture stores for instance, how can they give 4 years interest free credit with 1 year payment free on a £600 sofa? After studying business studies, I can tell you that this is a VERY clever idea and will in essence keep a large business afloat through a recession, lets take DFS as an example, 4 years ago DFS was doing very well and could afford to do the 4 year interest free with no payments for a year as the country had quite a good economy and people were buying expensive sofas like they were a packet of crisps. So when a recession comes along BINGO as the competion (who are not providing this offer) struggle to sell sofas and eventually go into administration DFS stops the offer and are still recieving healthy sums of money from sofas they sold 4 years ago and continue to use this revenue to keep the business going through the recession, then when the country eventually come out of recession DFS start selling lots of sofas again and make enough money to start the offer again incase of another recession. There you have it;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 How do they pay their suppliers? on the drip? I suspect they already have huge markups on sofas anyway... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marc_p Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 How do they pay their suppliers? on the drip? I suspect they already have huge markups on sofas anyway... They won't be a great turnover of sofas in a recession so supplier costs will have dropped and there are A LOT of people who will be oweing money on there DFS sofas. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tom S Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 look at BT, they are cutting 10,000 jobs and re-deploying alarge number (poss another 4,000 of their workforce) and BT is a big company Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gazboy Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 It seems that they couldn't refinance their loans, their current terms were due for renewal. They had a £1bn of revenue but £385m of debt but a share price of almost zero. There is a lot of other companies in the same boat and it isn't necessarily due to a bad business model but because they can't repay their debts in this current time, where's they could afford to 18 months ago when credit was cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedM Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 I suspect they already have huge markups on sofas anyway... Yeah. The sofa we bought from DFS had a huge mark up the side and two on the back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dragonball Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 MFI actually tried to manage their way out of their crap reputation and some of their stuff was Ok Woolies - the board of directors should be shot...just poor poor management with a complete strategic drift for years... Sorry for the staff - even if most of them were poorly trained Oiks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Havard Posted November 27, 2008 Share Posted November 27, 2008 Yeah. The sofa we bought from DFS had a huge mark up the side and two on the back. Stop it..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ark Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 look at BT, they are cutting 10,000 jobs and re-deploying alarge number (poss another 4,000 of their workforce) and BT is a big company Yeah but with 160,000 people in the UK alone, it'll mostly be done through normal staff turnover. It's not that big a deal really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted November 28, 2008 Share Posted November 28, 2008 They lost their way for a while and then tried to claw back the one stop shop things, even more so with their attempts to emulate Argos and do a catalogue service too. Exactly. My old man was a manager for them running top 10 grossing stores (usually top 5) in the country for his whole career. About 5 years ago they just kept cutting corners, trying to focus on most profitable items (entertainment at the time - the Internet and Supermarkets killed that), kids Ladybird clothing, sweets and toys. They lost a lot of regular customers who came in store for all the other stuff. The catalogue thing was never going to work. Once a company any size gets to a point where their suppliers will only accept cash as they're uninsurable as debt then it's a losing battle. After lots of staff cuts even back then, piling on lots of pressure to perform with less.... he ended up having a nervous breakdown and retiring early. Oddly he got a phone call early in the week offering him a job at £200 a day to audit some shops closing down and ensuring they stock was still sold, pricing was done, staff were working etc. They wouldn't say who it was...turns out to be the very company he spent his life working for! Pretty insensitive Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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