"Zavvi has continued to experience significant difficulty in obtaining stock on favourable credit terms. This has resulted in considerable working capital difficulties as a result of the failure of EUK, in addition to continuing operating losses."

Which translates in English as "We're feckin' skint !"

I was in a Zavvi 3 days ago...buying some good DVDs for practically nothing, and the queue was out the door. Its a shame that these shops are going bust especially at the high point of retail. Woolworth's prices on Music and Video were always criminal but Zavvi actually had some good deals going.

"Zavvi has continued to experience significant difficulty in obtaining stock on favourable credit terms"

Which is essentially what killed Woolworths. Great isn't it that as soon as the economy looks a bit sick, suppliers suddenly feel they can no longer extend credit to makor customers. What a great idea, stop selling stuff - thus cutting off your revenue stream. Presumably the next big wave of companies going tits up will be distributors who didn't understand how business is supposed to work.

"We have done all that is possible to keep the business trading, but the problems encountered with EUK, and particularly its recent failure, has been too much for the business to cope with."

Maybe if they had paid EUK that £100 million they owed them they wouldnt have these problems now

I've been buying loads of DVD's there. This is a real shame.

It's not DSG instead.

I've prayed every night for the past 2 weeks to Thor, yet still he listens not.

I just got an XBOX 360 from there, in full knowledge of the RROD design flaw (kid pressure to get one instead of a PS3)... I hope Microsoft will honour any warranty...

Staff were great, obviously store staff did not know how bad things were, I feel really sorry for them, not the time to be in retailing.

It was a lousy name which actually put me off going in there. Zavvi? It's just gibberish.

Bit of a bummer that it reduces the options on the high street even further but they shouldn't have been relying on credit so much. It didn't take a genius to work out that the low interest rate environment and easy credit would last for ever.

Who gets a stock of zavvi gift cards for christmas.

TBH I never saw the point of gift cards. "Let us exchange your currency that you can use anywhere for this card that can only be used in this store"

Went in to buy Guitar Hero World Tour Band in a Box- They wanted €230. Bought it in another shop for €180.

I never really forgave my local branch for closing its separate classical section and using it as a store room. However, I've been in several times this week and have been pleasantly surprised by the DVD prices, especially the boxed sets.

Another chain down the drain, unless you had shares in it why do you care?

The people employed in there would have been employed on minimum wage, they will probably have a better standard of living on the dole, when you take into account they have to travel there, and take a packed lunch.

The further down this economy goes, the better it is for the majority in the country, pound gets low enough we can start exporting, we ain't going to be getting immigrants now so there will be more land, the amount in taxes will drop so the government won't be able to waste tax money on a police state. More people will train in a vocational trade, we might get proper furniture and other industries back.

This country elected a bunch of dolts to run the country and there is no surprise that the sophisticated economy that we had, would fall apart in their oafish hands. So, we are going down quite a few grades, remember the UK is only as good as the twat in number 10, and you just need to look at Brown to see what the UK is now.

UK an epic fail, and it is hilarious :)

Last time I went into Zavvi, the DVD prices were just ridiculous. A couple of titles I wanted were 20 quid, when Play.com had them for under 7. With a price differential like that, it was only a matter of time.

So next time you go to buy something, and the other shop doesn't have Zavii to compete with and so they stick the price up €60 that's gonna make you happy is it?

Zavii was cheap for somethings not for others. That's why you shop around.

The little inependant rcord shops have been gien a hard time by the big stores who appear to have undercut them by not actually paying for ther stock. I hope we see a revival of smaller music stores as a result, like small bookshops.

I reckon that by following the bookshop model - stock 2nd hand & local aswell as mainstream, overnight order-in, selling associated accessories, selling coffee, arranging personal visits by performers, taking the stock to festivals, even arranging local festivals, diversifying into minority genre, offering services, opening late - they could be just as succesful as independants were 30 years ago.

"I hope we see a revival of smaller music stores as a result, like small bookshops."

Yeah, me too - I really do hope this is an outcome.

I also hope that the thousands of people laid off from the collapse of Woolies et al are going to be able to find themselves back in work soon. However much we sneer at the business credit/debt model, there's real, live people there getting screwed through no fault of their own.

"So next time you go to buy something, and the other shop doesn't have Zavii to compete with and so they stick the price up €60 that's gonna make you happy is it?"

Err...no....I'd just buy it online instead, and it'd probably be even cheaper.

What is almost certainly true is that these won't be the last companies going under, where they have been surviving by borrowing larger and larger sums of money, relying on the false "booming economy" (supported by ridiculous house prices) to keep them afloat. I have no sympathy for the companies who were too short sighted to realise that going hundreds of millions of pounds into debt based on an assumption (of the "boom" continuing) was a bad idea.

Of course, I have every sympathy for the staff who have lost or will lose their jobs because of something almost totally beyond their control.

There are some retailers in much stronger positions, where they have either kept their debts manageable or even actually have cash in the bank on balance. Of course, even they will be tightening their belts and perhaps cutting a few jobs, just to reduce expenditure.

Unfortunately the massive upsurge in consumer spending was always unsustainable. It was based on a housing market with rising values sustained by banks lending people more money than they could possibly afford to pay back. Once the market drops to a certain level, where first-time buyers can afford to buy a house on their salaries, it should stabilise again. All we can do is to hope that these people who control our economy have learnt a lesson to control it in the future.

I don't hold my breath.

Can't see that happening myself. Why would consumers want to start shopping somewhere that has limited choice at higher prices than online? Unfortunately independents cannot compete with online sales. Thankfully there are independent distributors out there who have an online presence.

Seriously, the only reason why chains like this exist and have driven out the smaller guys is because of the customer's demand for cheaper and cheaper things. We really on the whole don't care about quality so long as it is dirt cheap and in fact we often don't care that much about price and are happy to buy expensive rubbish from say Tesco instead of buying good quality for less at say Lidl's (obviously only the food). Its all about marketing (ie, people _think_ tesco is cheap) and profit (screwing the supply chain). and its all driven my us, the guilible uninformed consumer. All the companies were doing were trying to give the customer what he wanted: cheapness. If they didn't build their business on dodgy financial borrowing to enable this, they'd have long disappeared. For this very reason the end of the high street happened long ago when all the little stores were driven out by the large companies and their out of town retail parks (obviously this wasn't helped by retarded city planners refusing to solve congestion and charge reasonable prices for parking). Its going to be really interesting to see what takes their place as the usual 'build some flats' option is available either. I wonder if more online firms are going to branch out into delivery, seen it a bit with local farms etc, don't spose there is any money in it though. But interesting exciting times ahead! More micro breweries please!

that i like buying in shop instead of online at a guess 85% of my purchases are spur of the moment generally books and dvds or games. i go into hmv or waterstones look round read a few backs of covers then buy on impulse. (personally i want waterstones to survive i like the fact that they incourage staff to read the backs and write reviews and recommmendations i spend so much time in my local one i now know the staff and let them pick stuff for me.)

point is when i buy something i buy it cause i want it now play it now read it now watch it now. for that i need a shop yeah internet shoppings cool for christmas/ birthday presents or if you need something unique or hard to get hold of but me i like seeing what i'm buying before it arrives.

plus i like some one to yell at when i buy a dvd boxset for my mum and one of the dvds has the wrong show on it instead of being told there was nothing the company could do this actually happened the dvd had been printed on as some detective show (for get what now but had raw hide burned to it) they told us we must be mistaken and wouldn't take it back.