Coldkennels
Barnack-toting Brit.
Boojum, with all due respect, did you read what West Yorkshire Cameras actually wrote on the matter?
Here, I'll link it again for ease: We are closing.
WY Cameras actually did very well as a business. What made them do this was the fact their lease is up and they'd have to commit to another X amount of years in a period of economic uncertainty with no way of ensuring any sort of stability against national economic turmoil. Another shop here in my home town did exactly the same - they were ticking over okay, but when faced with the prospect of renewing their lease, they opted to close instead of getting locked in to another X years.
Also, based on this line -
Germany, in particular, is an interesting case study in this regard. I head over there at least two times a year, and town centres there don't have a lot of empty storefronts - and the stores they do have tend towards the niche and specialist, as I mentioned in my earlier post.
Here in the UK - and, I suspect, in the US - there is simultaneous lament of the "death of the high street" combined with the frustration at not being able to obtain anything you want from the stores that do exist. In fact, if you walk into a lot of stores, you find the exact same things on the shelves as the next place down; stores have become generalists, and as a result, it's barely even worth going into these places. I firmly believe this is what's pushed a lot of people towards the likes of Amazon - the breadth of what's available there, rather than the sheer convenience. Time and again you find specialist stores are usually the last man (or woman) standing, as they not only become known as "the place to go" for that specific niche, but they're usually staffed by people with a wealth of specialist information who can answer whatever questions you may have. WY Cameras were amazingly able to answer my questions about 1950s Leica flash equipment (CEYOO and VACU variations), and it's that sort of thing that kept people going back to them. Same with Mr CAD in London, who will probably be going until the day the owner dies (as happened to Croydon Photo Centre, the shop @rulnacco mentioned).
This is precisely the case with stores selling modern equipment. No one's buying digital compacts, bridge cameras, and entry-level DSLRs any more. Any shops that used to make a living out of mass-market consumable products like this are closing, that much is true. But, again, that's not really the product line or the market WY Cameras dealt with, and so that's not the issue they had.
As a side note for context, I popped into the aforementioned Mr CAD to help my partner pick out a new 50mm lens for her Nikon F earlier in the year, and the owner proudly told me his biggest seller nowadays is large format equipment. He apparently can't even keep it in stock.
Here, I'll link it again for ease: We are closing.
WY Cameras actually did very well as a business. What made them do this was the fact their lease is up and they'd have to commit to another X amount of years in a period of economic uncertainty with no way of ensuring any sort of stability against national economic turmoil. Another shop here in my home town did exactly the same - they were ticking over okay, but when faced with the prospect of renewing their lease, they opted to close instead of getting locked in to another X years.
Also, based on this line -
- I'm assuming you skipped over the fact that the Guardian article I linked to (Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail?) was looking at Berlin as a modern form of brick and mortar retail, so it's nothing to do with my "shire" (I don't live in a "shire" any more, sadly).
Germany, in particular, is an interesting case study in this regard. I head over there at least two times a year, and town centres there don't have a lot of empty storefronts - and the stores they do have tend towards the niche and specialist, as I mentioned in my earlier post.
Here in the UK - and, I suspect, in the US - there is simultaneous lament of the "death of the high street" combined with the frustration at not being able to obtain anything you want from the stores that do exist. In fact, if you walk into a lot of stores, you find the exact same things on the shelves as the next place down; stores have become generalists, and as a result, it's barely even worth going into these places. I firmly believe this is what's pushed a lot of people towards the likes of Amazon - the breadth of what's available there, rather than the sheer convenience. Time and again you find specialist stores are usually the last man (or woman) standing, as they not only become known as "the place to go" for that specific niche, but they're usually staffed by people with a wealth of specialist information who can answer whatever questions you may have. WY Cameras were amazingly able to answer my questions about 1950s Leica flash equipment (CEYOO and VACU variations), and it's that sort of thing that kept people going back to them. Same with Mr CAD in London, who will probably be going until the day the owner dies (as happened to Croydon Photo Centre, the shop @rulnacco mentioned).
This is precisely the case with stores selling modern equipment. No one's buying digital compacts, bridge cameras, and entry-level DSLRs any more. Any shops that used to make a living out of mass-market consumable products like this are closing, that much is true. But, again, that's not really the product line or the market WY Cameras dealt with, and so that's not the issue they had.
As a side note for context, I popped into the aforementioned Mr CAD to help my partner pick out a new 50mm lens for her Nikon F earlier in the year, and the owner proudly told me his biggest seller nowadays is large format equipment. He apparently can't even keep it in stock.
