There's more than gift vouchers at stake.

Commerce lady_cait worked for Zavvi before it was bought by Head Entertainment then moved to HMV, and we know what's happening to HMV.  She describes the process of living with uncertain job prospects and the horrible way she's been treated by all three companies. Here's when she discovered Zavvi was going under:

"There were tell tale signs for ages. Little things that, had I been more clued up on life, might have made me realise what was coming. Overtime stopped getting paid, less Christmas temps, problems ordering new stock, etc etc etc. I remember there being rumours of trouble, talking about it behind the tills. But when I got that text off Susie, I felt like I’d been smacked in the face. And so I reacted in the way any rational person would. I cried all the way home on the train and then I drank two bottles of rum with my friend Brett. I don’t have very good memories of Christmas 008."

Some day, remind me to tell you about the three weeks I worked at HMV in the 90s. I hated it too [via].

the shelves were empty

Commerce The Head (formerly Zavvi) shop at the Liverpool One shopping precinct is closing in August. Passing through this morning I noticed half the shelves were empty and much of the stock is heavily discounted. When I ask an assistant what was happening and she told me I could tell she'd been on something of a roller-coaster over it, her job looking secure and now -- not. I picked up a copy of Twister (Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton chasing tornadoes) for £1.76 and left.

There hasn't been anything in the news as far as I can tell so either the management company which bought out these stores has been unable to turn the new business into a going concern or they're scaling back operations and shutting the less profitable stores. Either way, it reduces the number of city centre specialist music and entertainment retailers to HMV and err that's about it -- with CEX picking up the second hand trade and WH Smiths and the hundred odd Tesco stores offering their narrow stock choices.

It's my fault of course, as I've said before. I don't go to these places unless there's a sale on and even then I've a fair idea of what's available online and more often than not it's still cheaper and I'm buying even less music, as predicted, with the advent of Spotify. When entertainment media is so prevalent, so available, the more traditional business models can't cope.

If I get a ying to listen to some of Julie London's back catalogue and its something I haven't already got, I just need to fire of the software, do the search, click and few times and there she is. It might be clinical, it might not have the same resonance of being in a record shop with the shared experience, but it is cheaper (free) and in these times, the price of eggs, bacon and sausage trumps almost everything else...

jobs will be saved

Commerce There she goes, there she goes again. Zavvi is finally leaving the high street with the remaining stores either closed or sold off to HMV or Head Entertainment, a business jointly run by former Zavvi chief executive Simon Douglas.

That's who's bought the Liverpool One shop which as Christopher Brown notes means that staff jobs will be saved and stops a big empty property appearing at Liverpool One so soon after its launch.

The shop won't be trading as Zavvi though, so the hunt is on for a new name. Hopefully they'll go with 'Head Entertainment', if only for the innuendo value, something sorely missing since the loss of 'Virgin Megastore'. Or is that just how my mind works?

the scene at the Clayton Square disengagement

Commerce The latest local Zavvi closure is at Cheshire Oaks. The property has changed hands a few times since the retail outlet village (or whatever they're called these days) opened. It was originally rented by an independent, and in my pre-internet days when it was almost impossible for me to find some films on VHS, this was a great place to pick up the kind of so-called art house films which are deleted even before they're released such as The Sticky Fingers of Time or Clockwatchers.

That was bought out by Virgin who also ran it as a discount store, until the Zavvi take over just turned it into an ickle version of the usual high street seller and, well, there we are.

This was the scene at the Clayton Square disengagement a couple of days ago:



The frosting in the window still betrays its origins.

It's a scene which is being repeated across the country, I know. Clayton Square is turning into a perfect storm for closures, with a Mark One and Woolworths also gone. Those large black and green signs in the window offer a cruel kind of false hope:



A printout on the door reveals the real truth:

there's a big empty shop in Clayton Square

Liverpool Life Since VHS is dead, I recently had another clear out to make some space. I was in Zavvi at Liverpool One early this morning looking for dvd replacements and as I bought Elizabeth and Sunshine, I asked the sales clerk if she knew if the chain was safe, she told me that they'd not heard anything since Christmas Eve.

I thought about her when I arrived home and heard that Zavvi had just announced they were closing a number of its stores and attempting to find a buyer for the others. I guessed since the Liverpool One store was new and under favourable rent conditions that it would the Clayton Square shop for the chop and as the Liverpool Echo's reporting that is the case with a loss of twenty-eight jobs. So her job is safe for now.

The Zavvi in Clayton Square and the Virgin Megastore before it have been in place since the mid-nineties, though my memory is faulty so it might be even earlier than that. I'm less sentimental about this closure than the Odeon on London Road. I have stories; when I was unemployed in '97 standing or sitting at the video screens, headphones on, watching whole new episodes of Star Trek because I couldn't afford the videos. Buying Eva Katler's EP. Wondering when the strawberry milkshake stain would be cleaned from the light inside the lift.

It's the loss of the chain we should really be worried about. With Woolworths gone too, and WH Smith cutting back, it leaves just HMV as the major music and dvd retailer in the high street, which puts the supermarkets in an even greater position to dictate the kind of music going on general release, in other words the kind of thing which can be sold to as wide a market as possible, particularly if its sung by Katie Melua or Coldplay.

Now I know it's partly my fault. As well as actually liking Dido, I now buy most of anything online; it's cheaper, sometimes it'll turn up before the release date, the entire back catalogue is potentially available not what's in store or could be ordered and it's simply more convenient. Yet, there should still be a place for a physical retailer on the high street that isn't Tesco with its limited selection. Sometimes its good to walk into a shop and not know what you want and having the tangible object in your hand.

Neither of the films I bought today were replacements in the end. They were impulse buys which are probably the best kind. I watched Sunshine as soon as I got home which is obviously something I couldn't do if I'd ordered it from Amazon. It'll be that delay which means that in the end HMV at least should survive and when the economy picks up another music retailer might move in to fill the gap.

But for now, there's a big empty shop in Clayton Square for the first time in years. I can't imagine what'll move in, though I suspect it'll be another coffee shop. Liverpool certainly hasn't got enough of those...