I wonder if there’s an overlap with the people who claim every reactionary right wing policy going is good for the poor? We’ve got one on our local forum claiming abolishing the congestion charge is good for the poor. It’s projection, presumably.

Mind you I favour humiliation over extermination.

We’ll have an Asda next year, but our enormous Woolies is a great out-of-town shop that is open until late (it’s a former Big W, on a retail park).

Huge DVD and gaming section, and a big toy department for replacement Spider-man toys when my boy has twisted the arms and legs off his.

I’m left with a utterly mediocre Morrisons and the abomination that is WHSmiths’ pricing.

Also, in agreement with Matt above, I wouldn’t dream of buying clothing online. Also, I still like buying records from record shops, books from book shops, and one of my biggest guilty-pleasures is Hi-Fi equipment – which should be auditioned before you buy. It’s not disorganisation or laziness, I just like getting out of the house. Call me old fashioned.

I buy car-insurance, software, plane tickets, and the odd DVD boxset online. Little else.

(Circles overhead, looking for bargains)

I’ll miss it, if only because there was no other obvious shop to find all sorts of odds and ends in one place, rather than somewhere that needed a Mary Portas-style makeover.

When they arrived they were different to how they looked in the photo on the website, far too pointy and shiny, make me look like an Elve or something, so I’m gonna take them back and get some different ones.

Buying stuff online isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially as the postman comes after the house is empty meaning I have to queue up at the parcel depot on saturday (which closes at 11:30 for some stupid reason) thus wasting time I could have spent in a shop browsing for something I really like.

Clothes sizes are also inconsistent, for example Next medium always fits me, whereas M&S medium is a bit small, there’s nothing worse than clothes that don’t fit properly, so I have to go back to the shop, may as well have just gone there in the first place.

That’s my opiniion anyway

Lazy?

So it’s those who actually leave the house, rather than those in front of their computer screen eating microwave pizza, who are the lazy ones.

Oh.

About half the population have never shopped online and don’t trust the Internet not to steal their money. If that group doesn’t skew towards Argos’s core lower-income, C2DEs, market then I’d be extremely surprised.

Anyway, we’ll see. My guess is that, because this recession will hit the middle classes worst, the budget end of the spectrum will mostly survive (unless they’re tipped over the edge by Woolworths’ fire sale, which I suppose is possible).

I bought a Peppa Pig play-set for my daughter, the new Dido CD for my wife, and a space-gun for my boy.

A month ago I bought The Wire series 5 for £25, cheaper in store than both Amazon.co.uk and Play.com on the day. I got Gears of War 2 for the XBOX 360 for £32 (after it had gone up to £40 in Gamestation).

They can be competitive and they don’t sell just crap.

All that said, your perceptions are more indicative than my experiences. After all, they’re going to the wall.

Personally, I’ll miss them.

Nail, head.

Ho, ho. A very fair analysis.

Argos isn’t that cheap, though, and that’s its problem. It’s not a specialist store and so all it has going for it is cost and convenience. Its not that cheap, so the former is nullified. Essentially it’s reliant on a load of lazy/unorganised shoppers, who don’t want to go online. That market isn’t going to be there during a recession as people will be bending over backwards to get stuff as cheap as possible.

Oh, its going to be brutal…

Yep, my feeling is it will be worse than we’ve ever seen it…

On one hand, trade creditors (who may technically own the stock if it has not been paid for) face a loss — minor for confectionary goods, but serious for electronic items, DVDs, CDs etc which can be restocked by the supplier. On the other hand, a fire sale generates money for the dying company that may help to meet statutory obligations and primary claims (outstanding wages, redundancy, tax, National Insurance). As more retailers get in trouble, shouldn’t we be concerned about the definition of “trading whilst insolvent”?

The collapse of MFI is interesting because of the company’s business model. My understanding is that the profit from selling furniture was incidental to selling credit services on behalf of other companies. Many car manufacturers, particularly those in the US, operate in a similar way. Are such companies are recoverable, if they are so reliant on consumer credit?