The Slow Death of the Specialist Shop

[major_clanger]

So, no more Jessops.

This time last year we had two specialist photo retail shops in Birmingham city centre: a branch of Jacobs and a branch of Jessops. I preferred the Jacobs, as it was part of a smaller and more specialist chain that always seemed to have experienced and enthusiastic staff and (a good sign in a photo shop) a selection of second-hand gear in the shop window that they would happily let you try out. But then Jacobs went under and so we were down to Jessops.

Jessops had a rather spotty reputation among UK photographers as a once good small chain that over-expanded and (like Dixons in the 1990s) staffed its new stores with pimple-face youths who had little interest in or knowledge of their products. But some stores were exceptions; I found their flagship branch on New Oxford Street to be good, and the Birmingham branch was well-stocked and seemed to have helpful staff. One of my colleagues bought a camera there only the other week and was full of praise for the guidance and help he'd received.

Now Jessops is gone too. Birmingham, Britain's second-biggest city, no longer has a photography shop. OK, there's apparently a branch of Calumet out on the Hagley Road somewhere, but they are more aimed at renting and selling to pros. You can buy cameras at Dixons or some of the high-end department stores, but the choice will be limited and good luck to you in finding an assistant who could advise you on whether a Canon 650D or 60D is better for your needs.

What has happened of course is that Jessops, like Jacobs before it, was squeezed between two new market forces. Sales of low-end digital cameras have dried up because most people now have one built into their smartphone. Meanwhile the knowledgable enthusiast now buys online via Amazon or one of the specialist retailers such as Wex. As well as reviews in photo magazines, buyers can now go to sites like Digital Photography Review, Imaging Resource or Photozone for detailed descriptions and comments upon pretty much any camera or accessory they might want.

The problem is of course that even the best online review isn't a substitute for actually handling an item and seeing and feeling for yourself whether it is easy to use and feels right in your hands. I came very close to dropping a few hundred pounds in Jacobs last year on a second-hand (but excellent condition) L-series Canon zoom lens because the staff were more than happy to stick it on a camera body and let me try it out. That's not an experience even the best review can give you.

This isn't quite the end for the specialist photo shop. London still has a few and whenever I'm in Woking for a family visit I'm pleased to see that Harpers Photographic - an old-style independent photo dealer around for some 80 years - is still going. But with Jessops gone it is now only a minority of towns and cities in the UK that will have one.

But my biggest worry from this is nothing to do with photography at all. It's that some time in the next five years I'm going to rewrite the above as:

'This isn't quite the end for the bookshop ... but with Waterstone's gone, it is now only a minority of towns and cities in the UK that will have one.'

Comments

[parrot-knight.livejournal.com]

I called into the New Oxford Street branch of Jessops yesterday, unaware that that was their last day of trading. I'm not knowledgable about the field, but the number of high-spec, high-price cameras on sale seemed surprising given the economic climate.

[andrewducker]

I suspect you can already say the same about music shops.

[andrewducker]

Aaaaand there goes HMV.

[inamac.livejournal.com]

The last time I bought a freezer I looked at the options online, checked the real life versions in Currys, and bought online. I expect to do much the same with the next TV. But for cameras and small electronic goods the loss of local retailers is going to be a serious problem.

Eventually, as the manufacturers discover that people need to handle the goods I suspect that they'll put a lot more effort into opening up trade fairs to the general public - following the craft community's marketing strategies.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

One of the comments in the DPReview discussion thread on the Jessops closure was that major camera manufacturers like Canon and Nikon might follow the lead of Apple and Sony and have their own showroom shops. This is all well and good in terms of buying cameras and lenses but the good photo store will also sell third-party products such as tripods, bags and so on; you either won't get that in a manufacturer's dedicated outlet or there will be a limited range of tied and approved brands.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Apple stores have a very wide range of third party accessories; they just don't stock the low end. But that's in keeping with their philosophy generally.

[teaparty.net (from livejournal.com)]

Leaving aside my thoughts on the demise of Jessops, and of the practice as using bricks-and-mortar shops as unpaid viewing rooms for pre-online-purchase decisions, I think when it comes to the possible demise of bookshops, many publishers are their own worst enemy.

Having been won over by the Kindle touch, I like reading content digitally. I read most of my books digitally (and my spend on books has jumped tenfold in the past year, since I no longer have to provide expensive Cambridge house space for each new book). But because the publishers are still in love with DRM, despite its manifest uselessness, the only place I can get most of my books is Amazon. Amazon is squeezing the publishing business mercilessly, and at the same time putting all those bookshops out of business.

AFAICT, Amazon can place no bar on making content available in mobi format; only on making it DRMed. If publishers would fix their recto-cranial love affair with DRM, license bookshops to sell unDRMed content direct to customers(and agree not to undercut them on direct distribution), a brick-and-mortar bookshop would be a place I could go to buy content for my Kindle (or eBook reader, or laptop, etc.). I would happily go to a good bookshop to be able to discuss what's worth reading, look at some sample excerpts in-house, and buy the digital content then and there. If I wanted instant gratification, I'd buy the content online - through my local bookshop's website. But for the vast majority of books, digital content is only available DRMed, and this therefore only through the makers of the device - and it is the publishers that decide it should be so.

Every time publishers complain that Amazon is making life hard for them, I wonder why they were so blasted keen to point the shotgun at their own heads.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

So true.

You've given me a thought, but it's more general than just bookshops so I'll do a general comment.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Nearly every episode of The Avengers, it seemed, had Steed and/or Mrs. Peel visiting a specialty shop run by a colorful British eccentric, in order to run down a clue.

In my mind, the UK is a nation crammed full of peculiar toy shops, tobacconists, schools for belly dancing, etc. Sorry to hear about the grim reality.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

You still get that in places. They survive in London either because they're in an expensive shopping area (the Regency-era shopping arcades in Piccadilly) or because the Underground network gives them an effective local catchment area of several million people. Outside London you get areas where specialist shops survive by huddling together - a very good example is Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter, where we now live.

What happened with Jessops is they they expanded in large part by buying and taking over small local camera shops. As such, when Jessops went under, something like 180 shops went out of business together.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Actually, we still have loads and loads of shops like that. And there is a glorious bright spot in the gloom that major_clanger describes, which is that the thing that is doomed is specialist chains, and in particular, chains of shops with untrained staff. By comparison, independent specialist shops with strong expertise in a niche area can develop a back-end website and effectively sell nationally. Many of them do, and it's the best of all possible worlds. But you have to be in the one, or two or three, places where the shop is to visit it; you can't go find a banjo retailer on every highstreet (or whatever).

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

In Germany, manufacturers seem to have their own shops, and stock small ranges of competitors goods - Leica for example. We also have London Camera exchange here in Soton, and until relatively recently had 3 LCE and 2 Jessops in town, which is patently over saturation. now I think we are down to an LCE and an independent.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I suspect that in a town the size of Southampton they will survive, and possibly even do reasonably well if they get the business that Jessops had. It wouldn't entirely surprise me if we get a specialist photo shop in Birmingham to take on the Jacobs/Jessops trade, as there are three million people within the wider conurbation and a huge media community. But most small and medium-size towns that had a Jessops won't get an independent to replace it.

[gnommi.livejournal.com]

I think we're probably at about the right level now... it was a bit crazy before!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

End of an era, but I suspect that they were in the situation of a LOT of people doing the "let's see what this camera is like" visit to the store but actually buying it on line, which is what has killed most games shops, computer shops, etc. It's just too expensive to keep a showroom going when most people take a look but buy elsewhere.

I'm a fine one to talk - the only thing I've bought in Jessops in 15+ years is a thing for cleaning crud off a camera's sensor, which cost all of £15; in that time I've bought at least three cameras on line.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Jessops was a pretty good place to go for cameras and lenses, the prices weren't that far from the white-market sellers on amazon.co.uk; I bought my D90 body there.

But they tried to counteract the limited profit on expensive kit by trying to charge £50 for a 16GB SD card, and I'm much more willing to buy those from scan.co.uk.

I suspect that part of the problem is that DSLRs of four years ago are still pretty good - there hasn't been a repeat of the jump from D50 to D90 - and full-frame is still a huge and expensive move to make, you gain half a pound on the body and lose the telephoto ends of all your lenses and the whole utility of some of them.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

The real death knell for specialist camera shops has been having adequate cameras on phones, though. They were completely reliant for profit on clueless people who wanted a snapshot camera; those people would buy a camera, and some accessories, and hence subsidise the thing that the shop cared about, which was selling niche product. But nobody wants a snapshot camera any more.

[hairyears.livejournal.com]

The smaller specialist shops are closing, too: Leicester lost Youngs Cameras last year, at about the time Jacobs' closed. As far as I know, the only specialist outlet in the county is Youngs' remaining shop in Loughborough.

It comes as a shock that a city the size of Birmingham has no photographic specialist in the city entre.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

As I mentioned in my reply to gnommi I would be surprised if that situation persists. Setting up a new store from scratch would be quite a brave move, but I can imagine that one of the existing shops in the city might expand into the photo niche. We have the first branch of Black, which is in effect Dixons' attempt to do a gadget boutique along the lines of the Apple Store (although a better comparison might be ask on Tottenham Court Road). If I were in Dixons management I'd be asking PWC what they wanted for the former Jessops Birmingham store, which is only a few minutes' walk from Black, with a view to setting it up as Black Photographic.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Black Photographic? That's a brand that's already suffering from overexposure.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Boom boom.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

I was going to mention ask, which I have bought a couple of cameras from; as retail as you could possibly want, and much better prices than Jessops ever managed.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

By a bitter irony, both Jessops and Jacobs started out in Leicester.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

The pimpley youth in DIY and building stores. (Actually the latter trade appears to employ these youths once their spots clear up, but that's a different issue.) It seems to suffer the same issues but I can't order 8x4 plywood online (or maybe I can and I've just not looked).

There seems to be an oppurtunity for a kind of reverse-Argos store. A place that charges admission, gives expert advice, allows you to handle the item they got from the back warehouse and then you go off and buy it on-line. It could have a nice cafe to mull things over (an exception to the business model as they'd probably sel the coffee rather than just letting you hold it), Wi-Fi for your ordering and special 'meet fellow enthusiasts' days. It would sell everything, but it would only need one of each thing in stock.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

I don't know how to do that at a reasonable admission price and without competing with, say, the unpaid show-room services offered by enthusiasts with big cameras at air-shows during the gaps in the performances.

(says the man who was tempted by a Nikon 70-300/VR having used one lent me by a random Iranian outside the Burj Khalifa who found the building too large and wanted to borrow my 18-200 briefly)

You might be able to combine it with a rent-kit-by-mail service, though in some sense if you've got spare kit to exhibit you haven't pruned the margins on your rent-by-mail service enough.

[davidwake.livejournal.com]

Of course not, but then the enthusiasts aren't always around and air shows aren't that conveniently timed.

I want to buy a radio, a camera and a pair of shoes. Go to shop, pay a single fiver, try them all out, have a coffee and a biscuit, then buy what I want on-line. I have that High Street shopping experience, without needing to use too much shoe leather wandering around and I probably gain my fiver back buying cheaply.

[pauldormer.livejournal.com]

My experience of Jessops in Guildford was that I could never get served in there.

[lebeautemps.livejournal.com]

I used Jessops for years when I got my first SLR. The kind chap used to go through an entire film with comments and technical advice every time I had a roll developed. I have to admit that I used Wex for my last SLR though. There was a significant cost difference and no Jessops near us, but in hindsight it feels like an excuse.

I'll probably never buy a small compact again - I'm waiting for Nokia's recent 40 MP Pureview camera phone to appear with android OS.

[bohemiancoast.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, if bookshops weren't completely shite, I'd use them more. I'm not going to miss them. But since Borders closed, there is roughly a zero chance that any bookshop will have the book I came in to get, unless it's a copper-bottomed bestseller. And when I frugalified and started using my local library, the main reason I did so was that it had become more like Amazon -- you browse the catalogue online and reserve the book online, and then go into the library and pick up the reservations as they come in. I never browse in the library any more than I ever browse in bookshops.

I don't miss record shops either, though I still buy lots and lots of CDs (out of cardboard boxes direct from musicians).

[celestialweasel.livejournal.com]

This is 100% my experience. I was also irked when I reserved a book for M from the library for 1 pound only to find she had bought it on the Kindle for 95p