News - DSGi adds to retail gloom with announcement of £30 million loss

[HEXUS]

Owner of PC World and Currys blames tough trading environment and restructuring charges for loss.

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[Jay]

oh dear. I use DSGi for all my OS licensing, they are pretty good to be honest.

[greenalien]

PC World are ridiculously expensive for basic computer stuff - e.g USB extension lead from CPC costs £3.50 - the only item PC world sell is the expensive Belkin option, at £24.99. I also have my doubts about the idea of selling computers like washing machines or TVs - I don't know anyone who's actually bought a computer from them - but then most of my friends are PC-literate!

[Brewster0101]

This is dam good news. After working for the DSG group for many years and some spent in and around Pc world, I would love to see the company go to the wall.....

Stupid prices, poor customer service, rubbish products... How they've survived this long is a mystery.

[RIX]

I got my 1st pc from pcworld when i was 11 (12 years ago), my mum paid £2000+ for a compaq presario lol, remember them ?

Then I lernt how to build them and never went back

If I remember right it was pentium 150 MHz, 16 MB ram etc.

I even remember my 1st upgrade: 2x voodoo 2 sli lol, got them from pc world aswell.

WHAT A RIP OFF

[Brewster0101]

Voodoo 2 in sli was awesome. I did this too with my Packard Bell iextreme or something like that. To think if PC worls goes then so does that crappy name packard bell... Another good thing..

[Stoo]

TBH, the PCW component shop was awesome (the old one), then they killed it, put all the prices back up and merged it with the main site..

I only use Currys etc now if I have no other option.

[Scott B]

Brewster, Packard Bell is owned by Acer now I'm afraid...

[Bob Crabtree]

When PC World was PC World - before it was sold to the Dixons Store Group - it was a truly awesome place.

Prices were razor sharp and the staff were knowledgeable and helpful - and you'd never before seen such a wide collection of PC-related bits and pieces gathered together in one place before, well, not in the UK, anyway.

The firm was run by Jan Murray, who was a very personable and smart bloke.

Understandably, he took the money on offer by DSG and (as far as customer service and value for money are concerned) it's been downhill all the way ever since, in my less-than-humble view, despite the massive growth of the number of stores across the country.

As someone who spent eight years in electrical retailing and another 13 years writing about it, I'm always shocked and amazed at how some retailers manage to get the most basic things wrong and seem never to learn or change their ways.

I'd love to think that one of the shrewder European operators will some day come in to replace DSG (WTF was the idea of DSGi - change your name and change your fortune?) but I've been hoping for that for years and it's still not happened.

Bob

[alsenior]

This is dam good news. After working for the DSG group for many years and some spent in and around Pc world, I would love to see the company go to the wall.....

Stupid prices, poor customer service, rubbish products... How they've survived this long is a mystery.

i too would love to see DSG go to the wall. but i cant help but feel sorry for the staff. they are obviously going to be collateral damage in all of this.

[0iD]

It's the staff that always suffer. The top brass will probably get a good payout & the workers will get the dole queue.

Would have made more sense (to me anyway) to amalgamate the companies to save costs.

[directhex]

It's the staff that always suffer. The top brass will probably get a good payout & the workers will get the dole queue.

Would have made more sense (to me anyway) to amalgamate the companies to save costs.

The management is the PROBLEM with DSGi

Retail stores have a ~1:1 ratio of staff to managers - 2:1 tops. Things are centralized which should be local, and local which should be centralized. It's a mess. And efforts to improve it are punished, not rewarded

[MadduckUK]

i too would love to see DSG go to the wall. but i cant help but feel sorry for the staff. they are obviously going to be collateral damage in all of this.

unless there is something similar (but better, obviously) that could take its place then i would rather they stuck around tbh, useful for grabbing the odd thing on the way home.

what happening with this cpw + best buy collaboration?

[Scott B]

CPW/BB said they were opening stores in Europe next year. It's not yet clear how Bankageddon might affect these plans. Here's an idea how the stores might look when they arrive.

[TheAnimus]

unless there is something similar (but better, obviously) that could take its place then i would rather they stuck around tbh, useful for grabbing the odd thing on the way home.

what happening with this cpw + best buy collaboration?

This is the thing, there is a demand for a I want/need it today retailer that the internet cannot replace.

My parents are stupid enough to live in the land of un-employment and webbed toes that is Cornwall. There is a PCWorld which does a relatively good job of having stock, you pay a premium for it but they aren't in a posistion to make that much profit with such high overheads.

I think they problem they have is they haven't realised more and more people are going to find its easy to goto dell's website and buy a cheap PC.

They need to provide high level of service, rather than try to compete on price.

[Cichlidash]

You can bet its the floor staff that will take the biggest hit from this sadly. While they might not be the most knowledgable of people (Dont that come down to bad training) they are people trying to make a living the same as everyone esle. More unemployment is never a good thing and if you use PC Worlds preorder web pages you can actually get prices that are as good if not better than most places online.