Right, so i've never seen that e-mail until today and I have a LOT to pick with that e-mail, bad grammar asides. This might come across as a bit of a rant, understandably since i'm out of a job I loved and made a lot of friends with.
"As a team we really didn't deserve the ongoing decline that has been the gaming market, but you all put up such an amazing fight that we lasted longer than we had any right to
It's almost as if he
knew the company was going under, after all some digging showed that the company was in red since 2015 (around the time the increase in push for phones trades and sales as they were "the biggest profit margin" rather than being competitive with core products ie. the games, which was still the biggest money turner) so it's no surprise that the company's credit got pulled if books are showing nearly 3 straight years of being in the red.
I can even offer my personal opinion on what
really killed Grainger Games. It's foray into Smartfix.
They trailed the phone cases which wasn't huge but did bring in a tidy profit, so naturally they purchased 500,000 phone and tablet cases, car holder and other tat and dedicated a third of the store space to it. I even remember a conversation where they said it was expected to bring in £1.6 million in profit, and when the end of year financials came in it actually took roughly £86,000. I know this because I spent the final few months in the warehouse trying to sort £100,000 worth of phone & tablets cases, seemingly all for naught now
There was even in-store phone repairs, which I point blanked refused to do since I was so poorly trained. I had 4 hours total of training, after which I was expected to be able to fix Iphones and Samsung S3/4/5 in-store. Hell with that, eventually samsung repairs just stopped, leaving only iphones, which begs the question of why bother doing it if your only offering 1 brand of phone.
and I've seen comments elsewhere that people were sick of seeing pop vinyls and other merch, the sad thing is that it was bringing in revenue and we actually went into the black in March, but by then it was too late. I honestly believe that if we went into Gaming Merch rather than phone accessories i'd still be in a job right now.
Chance made us colleagues but the fun and laughter we shared made us friends.
What does 3 failed businesses make you then?
pS. thank you to those who wished me well on here, means a lot