The way I understand it, is the problems started from about 2001 and there's been a number of major problems since then, which they only just managed to survive.Change of management teams and backers didn't really help.

Its been stated that the final records at the end of 2012 was a turnover of £236m with debts of about £28m.

As I said in an earlier post, from a statement of closing a few stores to total apparent collapse and store clearance only took a matter of hours.There's no mention at present if PricewaterhouseCoopers the administrator, is going to make an attempt at selling the business.

Leicester as suffered from three well known camera company's closing down in the last couple of years (Jacobs, Youngs and now Jessops), plus a number of other very well used independents. Most were same old family owned and run up to a few years ago.

"I hope customers who have lost out can get some recompense financially"

For information about that see this thread in our Tech Consumer Advice forum

This affair seems to get more interesting by the hour.

Apparently there as been four offers including one from David Adams (former executive chairman of Jessops) to HSBC last year regarding taking over the company, but the offers were rejected because according to David Adams "They (HSBC) were not interested in any discussions as they felt there was equity value to be realised in the future. Now six months later the company is in administration".

David Adams as stated that he is still very interested in purchasing the business "because administration was avoidable".

Either way, this affair will end like Comet or rise from the ashes. There does appear to be a bit of mud slinging going on behind the scenes!.

Posted by Pavvi

Part of the problem was caused by stores not having cameras/accessories physically in stock. It's all very well demonstrating a camera to a person and closing a sale but if the customer has to wait a few days for the items, they will likely walk away. One of the USPs of High Street stores is the ability to walk out with the item in your mitts and have a go with it. At Carphone Warehouse, I converted some (but not all) that were going to buy their mobiles online, on the basis that they could walk out of the store with their phones working. (full network functionality usually takes an hour or two, and at busier times longer but I always made this clear). When shopping there I often came across people liking a camera they demonstrated but being told it was out of stock, most walked away rather than wait for it.

What Jessops did have which was good was the ability to reserve something instore and get the online deal for it.

I prefer to shop in person myself especially with camera gear. There are still one or two camera stores left like London camera exchange and Calumet. LCE are generally pretty good, and Calumet are excellent, if geared primarily towards professionals. I will miss Jessops because they had a better nationwide coverage than others. Their telephone support lines, were however in my experience consistently poor.