Dick limps towards inglorious end: Gadget retailer on the brink Troubled gadget retailer Dick Smith Electronics is teetering on the brink, with banks sending in receivers after the company requested a trading halt. The company has appointed McGrath Nicol as its voluntary administrator, and lenders HSBC and NAB have sent in Ferrier Hodgson's James Stewart as receiver. Dick Smith …
The discounts offered seemed to be on Dick Smith branded stuff only.
Offspring number one needed a new smartphone for Christmas, DSE were $80 - $120 more expensive than the competition.
A wireless printer seemed like a good idea for the whole family, DSE were $20 - $120 more expensive than the opposition, depending on brand.
Half empty shelves, half hearted displays, (often lacking price labels), unmotivated staff, (although who could blame them), the place stinks of death.
As an ex-pat your comment has just made me realise I still have the .co.uk bookmark that I'm accessing the site through, however, living in Sydney, this news is very relevant to me.
If you've not heard of them, why you read the article let alone make it through to the comment section? Too much free time before the return to work?
Boo !%^*ing hoo.... we could say the same about Tesco and Dixons BUT we are adult enough to recognise that the site is/was UK centric. It's a wonder you don't complain about going to the loo it has foreign objects too..... polish your glasses you myopic TWAT and realize the site has expanded somewhat and the world is bigger than your basement/attic/bolthole......
for a childhood icon, although it has seemed inevitable ever since they dropped the hobbyist market and became just another phone/consumer electronics shop.
As a boy in the 70s and early 80s before I got into computers, I was into electronics. Tricky Dicky (as DSE was called by hobbyists then) was the go-to store whenever you needed hobbyist gear - from discrete components to common CMOS/TTL ICs to PCB etching fluid to soldering irons. I still fondly remember riding my bike all the way into town instead of the local shopping mall because of DSE selling transistors at 14 cents each when Tandy Electronics were ripping people off $1.95 for a two-pack, and because DSE was about the only place in my city to get the latest issue of ETI magazine. And of course his Fun Way into Electronics kits were what I cut my teeth on - digital counters, sound effect generators (remember the old SN76477 chip?), light chasers and even a digital bike speedometer.
So in a way it's sad to see them finally disappear from the scene. But in reality the essence of what they were had disappeared many years ago, when they transitioned from the hobbyist market to the consumer electronics market. When the hobbyist section gradually shrank from being most of the store to a small corner down the back was the death knell for the Tricky Dicky I used to know and love as a kid, and that was a long time ago.
There was some discussion here and elsewhere that JB HiFi was stealing all of Dick Smith's business in the expensive consumer electronics space, and that shoppers found JB HiFi a more pleasant place to shop (bigger range of stuff, better prices). My complaint is that JB HiFi plays f*cking terrible music at high volume - I need to wear noise reduction earplugs when I go in there (and those damn kids are on my lawn again, neehhh). At least Dick Smith was fairly quiet, and the staff generally pretty knowledgeable.
But yes, when they stopped selling components, and started only stocking Belkin and Monster A/V leads, the death knell had sounded......
Glad to see that PC World in the UK isn't the only place that employs staff like that.
My ex-boss had an (admittedly weird) PC that only had SCSI on board (no IDE, and it was before SATA was around). His HDD died while he was doing some important work. Thankfully he had backups, but obviously needed the HDD to get the PC running. So, he drove down to the local PC World and was told they didn't stock SCSI HDDs as SCSI was a dead technology. We went up Tottenham Court Road in London (which was then a good place to go for tech) and had a new HDD within a few minutes.
As with all such places, it depends on who you are lucky enough to get. I once went in to upgrade my DSL modem and the guy I got asked my present model and told me a firmware update was available for that model so I didn't need a new one.
I would have bought something else to say thanks, if only they carried anything in stock I actually wanted to buy.
They never made the transition from hobbiest to high-street store, partly because they never threw off the legacy locations and commercial leases.
As a hobbyiest store, people would, as described above, go out of their way to shop at DS. Once they moved to selling commodity electronics, their shop locations were mostly non-commercial. The new private owners had a shot at fixing that (many years to late), but picking up good retail locations is a tough and long-term proposition.
The main reason they seem to have died is a massive con----struction job on the part of their parent company according to the article pointed to by the Reg:
https://foragerfunds.com/bristlemouth/dick-smith-is-the-greatest-private-equity-heist-of-all-time/
It seems they only wanted them from Woolies to put them on the stock market and turn a 20 mill investment into a 520 mill payday...
I'm sure you're right about the con job, but I can't help wondering who would have been stupid enough to pay that sort of price for DSE.
When it refloated I remember reading an opinion piece in the local paper, (NZ) saying something along the lines of "You'd need to have rocks in your head to pay that much".
I guess it's the old one born every minute thing.
Sorry. Should have been clearer there. I am very aware about what is in it for the shop. It is guaranteed revenue at some time and they are under no legal obligation to honour it and can exclude all manner of things. (Try buying an Xbox or iTunes card with a discounted gift card). Yes it might get discounted from time to time but you will get that much off if you ask for a discount or show any competitor's website or brochure. It just doesn't make logical sense for the consumer to bind their money in such a way.
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