Google| Subject | Re: Calumet files Chapter 7 |
| From | Martin Brown |
| Date | 03/24/2014 10:07 (03/24/2014 09:07) |
| Message-ID | <3BSXu.132142$gc7.43556@fx03.am4> |
| Client | |
| Newsgroups | rec.photo.digital |
| Follows | Tony Cooper |
| Followups | nospam (2h & 8m) PeterN (3h & 55m) PeterN (4h & 13m) Tony Cooper (5h & 4m) > Martin Brown |
On 21/03/2014 04:29, Tony Cooper wrote:
Tony Cooper
On Thu, 20 Mar 2014 21:30:18 -0400, Robert Coe <bob@1776.COM>wrote:Robert Coe
On Fri, 21 Mar 2014 11:43:07 +1300, Eric Stevens <eric.stevens@sum.co.nz> wrote:
It seems to me unlikely that the employees would not have seen the writing on the wall. Bricks and mortar photo stores are a dying breed. You only have to look around inside one to see why. Smartphones have annihilated the point and shoot market, digital zapped print processing.: If the employees had notice, word would have leaked out into the wider : community and the business would have ground to a halt in a confused : shambles. They would still have been broke but their affairs would : have been in just that more of a mess.
People are in there playing with new expensive kit tying up experienced salespeople to help choose their kit and then blatantly looking on their iPhone to see which website has it for the cheapest price. The same thing that also killed Jessops and Jacobs in the UK. The former even offered to match online prices but it didn't save them(*).
(*) A handful of their shops in the premium locations have reopened under new management and the same Jessops name.
A method widely adopted by bankers cut from the same cloth as the infamous Fred the Shred who totally destroyed RBS requiring a massive taxpayer bailout to prevent the global banking system collapsing and still walked away with all his severance pay and pension entitlements.Translation: There wouldn't have been time for the officers to find a way to take care of themselves before the s*** hit the fan. Understand that I don't know that that's what happened in this particular case, but it IS a time-honored capitalist strategem.
Tony CooperIt tends to suggest that the directors were guilty of trading whilst insolvent which would be an offence in the UK.
Calumet had, at the time of declaring Chapter 7, less than $50,000 in assets and between one and ten million in liabilities. That indicates a long-term slide downwards, not a sudden descent. There was time for any pre-planning the officers wanted to do without a need for an unannounced immediate closing.
This isn't a failure of capitalism. It's a failure of a few individuals to successfully manage a business in a changing market. Other capitalists reacted more intelligently to the changing market and provided competition that Calumet couldn't keep up with.Actually I think it is a failure of capitalism in that people these days buy the cheapest online and screw over the honest dealers. High streets are now increasingly half empty or worse still occupied by charity shops selling tat and payday loan sharks stolen goods.
-- Regards, Martin Brown
03/13/2014-
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