In administration?

Game managed to beat HMV to the "in administration" punch.  Reading the details of the rescue package it's hard not to be cynical. Okay some jobs have been saved, and Game live to fight another day. But this seems to be a way of closing branches which they probably should have closed when they went on their acquisition  spree a few years ago. In this context, and much like HMV, they aren't solely a victim of external factors beyond their control - despite how much they protest to the contrary. Over expansion, foolhardy acquisitions, and being fully paid up members of the "If it's like this now, it will always be like this" school of economics contributed. As did being entirely reliant on the whims of a narrow, finite market. Mix their foolish duplication, triplication (and whatever 4 times is) of shops in (seemingly) every single town, all of whom selling the same stuff at the same price and this outcome was unavoidable. Of course the poor saps in the shops, who had nothing to do with making the "big" decisions, are on the receiving end of the pain. 

Typical. 

Of course "Game" aren't alone. Others gaze Canute* like into the abyss. Dixons are another troubled retailer with an unsustainable number of identical branches. None of this is more obvious than in Northern Ireland where a population of 1.7 million have access to 15 outlets, many of whom are just across a retail park from each other. Now if you'd posted losses in the last complete financial year of £225m wouldn't you perhaps consider cutting costs? Perhaps merging one branch with another? Now obviously this isn't cost free.  But the alternatives aren't sustainable. Selling the odd £15 laptop bag or a £39 HDMI cable when a punter buys a laptop or a TV isn't going to help pay the rent.  No matter how many times you click your heels and wish very hard that it will. Again though, when the pain comes, you can be damn sure it won't be the culpable who suffer**. Currys are (along with HMV) the prime example of a retailer with a world view entrenched in the 1990s. Yeah they have a website you can buy things from but their entire "bricks and mortar" mortar model has been rendered irrelevant. Their approach - sell a warranty, sell an install, bung in a free bag if they take either, might have worked when (for example) a "cheap" Hotpoint washing machine was £400, but not now when the equivalent is only £220. But we'll talk more about Currys when they release their annual figures which, if I was a betting man, will be better than last years. Why do I think this? If they are much worse they will simply cease to exist in anything like their current form.    

*I'm using this metaphor in the popularly believed sense, rather than the more appealing (to my mind any way) truth - Canute didn't try to stop the tide, rather he did what he is famous for to prove he couldn't.

**Likely as not they'll be head hunted by some other organisation. It seems there are plenty of companies who want, in amongst their skill set, at least one executive who've led their previous employers to the brink of oblivion.