Jessops heads into administration

Donk wrote:

TheTurnipKing wrote:Online retailers are going to have to start subsidising retail stores, no two ways about it.

Why? It's not the online retailers fault that the high street retailers are for the most part entrenched in old wasteful practices.

BBC News wrote:Jessops brand sold to Dragons' Den's Peter Jones

The collapsed High Street camera retailing brand Jessops has been bought by a group including entrepreneur and Dragons' Den star, Peter Jones.

The company's administrators PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) announced the sale on Thursday evening.

PwC said: "We can confirm we have sold the brand and certain other assets to a number of buyers including entrepreneur Peter Jones CBE."

It is not currently thought that stores will reopen as part of the purchase.

YouSmellOfWee wrote:I guess their poor business model left them overexposed.

Jessops: Scale of financial horror revealed (update 12.45pm)

Jessops owed Canon and Nikon around £20 million when it collapsed last month, with assets of just £3.4 million available to preferential creditors, it has emerged.

Amateur Photographer (AP) can reveal the full scale of Jessops' financial troubles and the amount Jessops owed its key suppliers.

In total Jessops owed around £80m, including £42.6m to listed creditors.

Customers who had made deposits and not yet received goods, who returned goods and not received repayment – or who were due compensation – were owed £201,000.

Unredeemed customer gift cards totalled £869,000 and Jessops owed the taxman more than £1.3m.

The woeful figures are contained in records filed at Companies House, which have been seen by AP following a report published by This is Leicestershire earlier today.

The Notice of statement of affairs, submitted to Companies House by Jessops' administrators PwC, states that just £407,000 is available to unsecured creditors.

Canon (UK) Ltd was owed more than £16.4 million and Nikon (UK) Ltd over £3.3m when administrators were called in on 9 January.

Major suppliers, including Canon and Nikon, had retention of title over unsold stock held by Jessops when it closed, meaning this should be returned to them as legal owners.

In Nikon's case, it seems most of the amount owed was held on a retention of title basis, according to the Companies House report.

Records show that Canon's security with Jessops, in terms of stock supplied, was £9.3m of the £16.4m it was owed.

Jessops owed Panasonic Marketing Europe nearly £4m; Sony UK Ltd around £3.2m; and Fujifilm (UK) Ltd about £2.6m.

Jessops' debt with Samsung amounted to £1.2m.

The collapsed chain owed its bank, HSBC, £28.7m and staff around £1.4m in wages.

Staff are treated as preferential creditors when a company falls into administration.

Customers who had signed up for Jessops Academy Courses, but not yet attended when the retailer shut its doors, were owed a total of £183,000.

More soon...

Staff are treated as preferential creditors when a company falls into administration.

TheTurnipKing wrote:Preferential just means you're guaranteed a slice of what's available. Unlike the poor bastards with gift vouchers or refunds owning.