HSD: Jessops UK goes bust

The Jessops camera and general electrical retailer in the UK has gone bust. Jessops will be closing all 187 stores across the UK and parts of Europe over the next couple of weeks. 1,370 ‘permanent’ staff, and about half as many casual and commission workers, will lose their jobs.

Anyone like me who has been involved in photography for a long time will know of Jessops. They started out as a private company a long time ago catering for anyone who used a camera. Long before the Internet I have bought a few things via snail mail from Jessops back when you had to organise a bank cheque on a bank in the other country in order to buy overseas.

Sometime in the late 90s Jessops started to sell other electrical goods but still mainlined in photographic equipment.

Sometime around about ten years ago they went public.

Maybe going public was their downfall, or maybe it is just the general decline of specialist camera retailers and the end of shop-based photo-processing (for negative and slide film) that got them.

Sort of makes you wonder what sort of shape local specialist camera retailers like Camera House are in . . . doesn’t it?