101 Sale

Posts Tagged ‘recession’

The recession is pretty merciless when it comes to its victims – the only thing that’s inevitable is today’s economy is that if a business is not secure, it will go down.The UK has seen the fall of some pretty big and well established retailers such as Woolworths and MFI in recent months. Now its the turn for diamond and pearl jewellery retailer Diamonds & Pearls. The jewellery retailer, based in Bedford, just north of London, have recently announced they’re going into administration. Over three hundred jobs could be lost, with 91 high street stores across the UK under threat of closure.Global accountancy and management consultancy firm KPMG have been named as administrators. Myles Halley, and Richard Philpott, the administrators appointed by KPMG Restructuring, said they plan on selling up the business and are looking for a buyer.It was clear from their statement that this is going to lead to branch closures, and, in their words, “a number of redundancies”.

So another one bites the dust and joins the growing list of recession casualties in 2009. Yet fairly recently the chain described itself as ‘one of the UK’s fastest growing fashion retailers’. So what exactly went wrong? Is this inevitable for small to medium sized retailers and businesses during this recession? Well I would say no. While Diamonds & Pearls’ physical stores may have been doing well in recent years, a quick look at their website, http://www.diamondspearls.co.uk – and you’ll quickly see the problem. Aside from being a pretty poorly designed site, when you click on “Online Shop” you get the message “Our Online Shop is currently under development, Please call back soon”! Hallelujah! End of mystery, to my mind. By failing to support their business with a strong online presence and the ability to shop online, Diamonds & Pearls have really shot themselves in the foot. If anything is clear to see during this recession, its that consumers are increasingly going online to save money on high street prices. It is particularly crucial for SMEs. If you’re not in that sphere and holding your own, and trying to run your business purely on retail outlets alone, you’re almost guaranteed to fail. It even effects the biggest chains such as Woolworths, MFI and most recently Principles. These companies had one thing in common: they categorically failed to really capitalise on the online retail revolution that has been going on for the past decade. If I was looking for information on saltwater pearls, or browsing for freshwater pearl jewellery for a Mother’s Day gift, the first thing I’d do is search for those things. The same as hundreds of thousands of internet shoppers would also do – and they wouldnt have found Diamonds & Pearls this way
. If you are involved in retail, let this be a lesson to you, or you might end up in the same situation.