Wow :o Quite shocked about that. Much as it's a useless music retailer these days, it will be a shame to see Woolies go.

R.I.P Woolworths!

 

It was totally fooked with 385million pounds of debt though, that’s £472,000 per store! Totally unsustainable, harsh for the 25,000 employees though.

 

If Woolies goes, unemployment will rise in our area as we have 4 of them, in the Medway Towns

Except for an independant shop this'll be the last chain music/entertainment shop in town :o

I completely agree.

 

The other week i bought a CD from Woolworths (only through necessity, Morrisons were too busy :P) and the girl took the crappy display case and quickly stuck the real CD in a carrier bag and off I went. When i got outside I realised the case was really badly cracked and the back inlay was torn. Obviously i took it back and saw the same girl. She gave me such a filthy look and swapped the case for me and as she did so she tore the booklet and bent the pages because she was trying to remove the book by pulling at a single page. :o

 

I dunno about you, but i'm a bit anal when it comes to CDs and like them all nice and tidy, after all i do pay money for them :cry: :D Needless to say I got another decent copy <_<

 

I bought a compilation album the other week, case was okay, but the back cover was upside down.

 

if anyone has woolworths vouchers you better cash them quick

 

http://www.vouchercodes.com/vouchers/woolworths.htm :lol:

I think it's blatently going to be taken over!

 

Maybe even have a new name?

 

The option would be to close down alot of their stores and focus on a small few by updating them and giving them a fresh look...Like Zavvi for instance!

Woolworths Retail and EUK in administration

 

09:25 | Thursday November 27, 2008

 

By Ben Cardew

 

Woolworths Retail and EUK have gone into administration, in a move that will be felt throughout the industry.

 

The company’s board took the decision to appoint adminstrator Deloitte last night after talks to sell Woolworths’ troubled retail arm failed.

 

However, the Woolworths Group itself is not in administration, nor is 2Entertain, Woolworths’ joint venture company with BBC Worldwide, which is the parent company of catalogue label Demon. Talks between Woolworths and the BBC continue over the Corporation’s commercial arm buying out Woolworths’ stake in the company.

 

The move will impact heavily on the industry in the run up to Christmas: Woolworths had a 10.7% unit share of the albums market in 2007, according to the TNS Audio Visual Trak Survey, second only to HMV, while EUK is the UK’s main distributor of music product to clients including Zavvi, Asda, Sainsbury’s and the Woolworths chain itself.

 

It had been hoped that EUK, which is itself profitable, would be spun off.

 

Woolworths said in a statement to the stock market, “Further to the announcement of November 26 2008, the board of Woolworths Group plc announces that discussions relating to the potential sale of its retail business have now ended.

 

“Following, and as a consequence of the termination of those discussions, the boards of Woolworths plc and Entertainment UK Ltd have concluded that there is no longer any prospect of those businesses being able to operate as a going concern. Accordingly, the boards of both companies last night resolved to file petitions for administration in the High Court.

 

“Woolworths Group plc is not in administration and remains in discussions with BBC Worldwide relating to the possible sale of its 40% interest in 2 Entertain Ltd.”

Eep :blink:

Hi all, I don't post here but I do check most days for the midweek sales and any general chat that's going on. And yes... I work at Woolies on the entertainment counter.

 

To answer a few questions:

 

CD Singles - we only get the odd few in that are deemed to be "big" releases, eg. Anything X Factor related pretty much at the moment, and are now in the CD Cheap Chart since there's no singles chart.

The CD display cases - the reason they're used is to ensure that there's always something on the shelf even if we're sold out of it in-store (generally lots of titles this time of year, so the shelves would be half empty) as we're able to order CD's through the tills in much the same way you'd order off the website. These are generally marked with a purple "sold out, order me" tag. It's also to avoid putting real cases out there, where they'll get damaged, stolen and we'd have to masterbag (take out the CD itself and file it in a slipcase) 1 of each chart title which risks damage to the CD and would take forever. The reason some CD's behind the counter are damaged is they'll either get damaged in transit or (in our store certainly) the drawers are god-awful and are prone to damaging them. We do have replacement cases we can use or we can swap the case with another one, which I always do if I noticed it's damaged. Back catalogue CD's are always masterbagged and because customers tend to treat the cases like c**p on the shelves, they'll inevitably end up damaged too.

 

As for the stock lying everywhere and uncleaned cases... the simple reason is that we're just horribly understaffed due to lack of wage budget. There's no spare time to clean the cases, and they can't afford to have more than a couple of people on outside opening hours to stock the shelves so it has to be done when we're open. Especially at this time of year, the shop takes a right battering throughout the day with customers picking things up and then leaving them on another shelf 2 aisles away, kids picking up and trying out any old toy, and us doing our best to help customers out and keeping things aside for them for when they're able to get in. Again, we try to tidy at the end of the day, but there's generally nobody to do that along with everything else that needs to be done.

 

I'm working this afternoon so we'll hopefully get more information then, but as of yesterday we're still accepting gift vouchers, but are not selling any so you'll get change in cash. Obviously I'd still advise you to use them if you have any. And we've also been warned not to discuss the ongoing situation with customers or anyone else, so that's really all I can say at the moment.

 

But all stores will be open until Christmas we have been told.

Thanks for the info Scott. So what's the chance of a massive sale to bring in the customers and hopefully keep the company afloat for a few months? :)

Edited November 27, 200816 yr by TomKay

There's no plans for any substantial price cuts just now as far as I'm aware, but a lot of older stock has been reduced (as normally happens this time of year anyway) such as CD towers, DVD racks, packs of blank CD's, DVD's etc. We've got wooden CD towers for £1 and DVD-R 5 packs for 50p, but obviously not all stores will have older stock. But as of right now the plan is just to get everything out for sale that we can as incoming stock is pretty limited due to it coming from EUK who are in the same situation...

 

So if anyone's hoping for the X Factor winner's single when it's released or any new albums then you may be out of luck. But there's a whole load of pretty new albums going for £5 just now (and were such before all this happened, so it's not the start of all the albums being this price), such as Leon Jackson, Boyzone's new greatest hits, the new Oasis album, the new Smiths greatest hits and one called All Men Allowed (or something like that!). So it's certainly worth a visit to see what you can get on the music side of things, and all the Xmas wrapping and chocolates are 3 for 2 just now (buy 3 and get the cheapest one free).

Thanks for posting Scott, good to have an inside point of view. Hope all goes well with you.

Cool, thanks for the info, but I think you mean Only Men Aloud :lol:

I have a friend who is the manager of a Woolworths store and basically although the stores will continue to trade at the moment as has been mentioned above deliveries into stores will be limited to say the least - Basically stores will be selling what stock they have and what is in the depot. So over the coming weeks unless a rescue package is put into place quickly the stores will be looking empty across all areas and in regards to the entertainment section new releases might not even be delivered/sold in stores as companies obviously don't want to ship their stock to EUK only not to be paid and lose their stock :unsure:

Thanks Scott, tough times ahead, hope it goes well for you.

 

Its sad to see a big company like Woolies going, it will certainly effect the whole country if there is no rescue plan for it, especially the entertainment section. Just have to wait to see how much the X Factor winner do in sales.

the whole EUK thing is going to affect quite a few other places as well, not just Woolies.

 

Think I might have to pop down to Woolies tomorrow, as I like getting the £9.90 DVD's usually :(

Can someone explain what 2Entertain is please? I thought it was the distribution/wholesale system for media, but that's EUK isn't it?

Can someone explain what 2Entertain is please? I thought it was the distribution/wholesale system for media, but that's EUK isn't it?

 

 

http://www.entuk.co.uk/home

 

This will probably explain it a lot better than me putting it into words

Can someone explain what 2Entertain is please? I thought it was the distribution/wholesale system for media, but that's EUK isn't it?

 

2Entertain release certain titles (DVDs usually) in conjunction with Woolworths.