Jessops Closes all 187 Stores but would they have if they owned Camera.com, Cameras.com, DigitalCamera.com or DigitalCameras.com

Jessops was a UK National Camera chain store that went into Administration this week and today the Administrators have announced all 187 Stores shall close and 1,370 staff shall be made redundant.

The reasons we keep hearing is Jessops didn’t catch onto the Digital Sales they lost their business to Amazon and other online retailers aswell large supermarket chains here in the UK such as Tesco administrators also claim that Camera Phones didn’t help the business with many users now using their Smart Phones instead of purchasing a Digital Camera but if Jessops wanted to succeed and make it online they could have bought any of these domain names – Camera.com, Cameras.com, DigitalCamera.com and DigitalCameras.com all of these Dot Com category killer domains with natural type in traffic have sat parked earning PPC revenue for sale for several years, Jessops could have bought these domains and become a global leader in the Digital Camera market.

What is it with Retailers? What don’t they understand about the online market and owing a strong generic domain name with type in traffic that shall bring pre qualified leads?

Jessops had been in bad shape for a while and since 2007 the cards had been marked that Jessops was destined to fail without growing their online business so Why when you have revenues in excess of £300 million pounds won’t you spend some of the cash to buy domain names that could turn your business around?

Stories like this is what are going to help make Domain Name Joint Ventures easier with large corporations moving forward… Well at least I hope it will.

If they didn’t want to drop huge amounts of money buying the dot com they could have purchased the local CCtlds which is the domain extension .co.uk during the past 5 years when they started seeing financial problems Camera.co.uk, Cameras.co.uk, DigitalCamera.co.uk and DigitalCameras.co.uk – I am sure any of these domains could have been purchased here in the UK for under £1million each but it didnt happen instead Camera.co.uk and Cameras.co.uk two developed websites took traffic and potential sales away from Jessops while DigitalCamera.co.uk and DigitalCameras.co.uk stayed parked earning PPC Revenue.

I really feel sorry for the Staff as these guys and gals who were based in these stores have lost there livelihoods due to the fact Senior Management or Marketing Managers didn’t have the foresight to spend some of their revenue in purchasing one of these domain names and developing or even redirecting them to their site Jessops.com

About Jessops from Wikipedia

“Frank Jessop opened “Jessop of Leicester” in 1935, as a specialist photographic retailer. The company expanded to major towns and cities. The 200th store opened in July 2001. The Jessops mail order catalogue is available free from the stores and is usually released quarterly.

Alan Jessop, Frank’s son, sold the firm in 1996 in a management buy-out. ABN AMRO paid £116m for the company in 2002, and then floated it on the London Stock Exchange in October 2004.

Financial problems

In 2007, the company suffered financial difficulties resulting in a strategic review and eventually leading to a re-financing with its bankers, HSBC, in September 2009. This resulted in the group’s trade being transferred to a new holding company, Snap Equity Limited, whilst Jessops plc was placed in liquidation and the group’s final salary pension scheme transferred to the Pension Protection Fund. Snap Equity was formed as a private company 47% owned by HSBC, 33% by pension trustees and 20% by an employee trust. The Group’s head office is at Jessop House in Leicester.

The company finally went into administration on 9 January 2013 with an application made to the High Court.

On 11 January it was announced that all 187 stores would close, with the loss of 1,370 jobs.”

What are your thoughts? Do you see many more Bricks and Mortar Stores Closing due to not having the foresight to invest in a Premium Generic Domain Name with Type In Traffic?