egafd.com

Not surprise as their prices are always higher than most of the other places.

This is news to me. Shame really as I have had some good stuff at good prices from them in the past. But, it is now a fact that online shopping is cheaper and with less disposable income availlable to buyers invariably they will choose to shop online and have the goods delivered to their doors.
My missus bought me a Kindle for Christmas online from Amazon. A fair bit cheaper than PC World or Staples. The books are a darn sighjt cheaper as well. Tom Clancy's latest Threat Vector is ?9 99 in hardback or ?4 99 from Amazon.
Before anyone calls me a selfish sod contributing to the decline of the high st shop don't bother, it is my choice to buy whatever from who and where I want and mine alone. I have also just bought a new set of alloys for my car. Merc price ?900. Wheelbasealloys price ?484 inc carriage. No contest.
I think that what it does show is that alot of goods are overpriced, even if the retailer has overheads such as staff wages, rent, fuel and light costs etc. I also think that some retailers do themselves no favours and are just a tad greedy charging what they think they can get away with. When I was in the vehicle aircon industry it was accepted that spares were marked up 100%. That is unsustainable and I had no sympathy for suppliers. I'm not sure that it has changed much either, but it is a while since I was involved in aircon units.

Rent and rates have also driven real shops out, has has the car-hating attitude of councils, making it impossible to park anywhere, and expensive when you do.

They have been just about hanging in there for years. The shops used to be reasonably well stocked with camera gear and then they seemed to go through an identity crisis i.e. are we a photo processing store or do we sell a good range of cameras. And I suspect that they ended up doing neither very well. The only surprise is that they have lasted so long.

Another chain that has survived longer than I thought is HMV. What is their business now? Do they sell a good range of CDs or are DVDs their focus or is it games or Ipads and tablets in general?

Again in many of the small HMV stores I have popped into recently they don't have much of a range of anything, but can "get it very quickly" which rather negates the point of going into a High Street shop anyway.

Sad but not surprising, ever since the change from film to digital they have lost the footfall of those buying films then and getting them processed which also reduced sales of albums, batteries, cases etc. as well as spontaneous purchases of higher value items on offer.

Inevitably with the shop chain overheads they can not sell equipment with only say a 10% markup over online outlets like Amazon not to mention sniffing out previous models available with even bigger savings on eBay.

I reckon 90% of photos are now taken on Smart Phones rather than cameras. Photography as a hobby seems to be in decline.

Arginald Valleywater wrote:

> I reckon 90% of photos are now taken on Smart Phones rather
> than cameras.

The iPhone 4 is the most used camera on Flickr submissions.

Err......isn't it a fact that parking is harder because there are more cars?

And given there are more cars, there are more people looking for car parking spaces. Surely the rules of supply and demand apply to car parking as well as trading goods. There is more demand for parking spaces so the price rises.

And if you think the council's are 'car-hating' you should try finding somewhere to tie up your horse the next time you're going to Dixons for an HDMI cable. Nightmare.

I don't think it's just digital cameras and phones that have taken custom away from the likes of Jessops. The main culprit is Facebook.

I've got a few old Konica and Minolta rangefinders that I sometimes take with me for walks and had rolls developed in Jessops on the odd occasion (if they were colour). Place was full of middle-aged women having their digital shots printed out because they couldn't get good results at home with their inkjets. This last 2 or 3 years more and more people just post their albums on Facebook where they can share their photos with anyone they want. That's killed off printed snaps more than anything in my view.

Dead and gone.