Bye bye, HMV - etc

Yes, I am sorry for all the employees of companies like Jessop's, Zavi, Comet and HMV who are joining the dole queue at the worst possible time. And through no fault of theirs.

Am I sorry for the directors - the so-called leaders - of these companies? Not for one minute.

They are simply repeating the lack of leadership shown by the bosses of UK companies in the 1970s and 1980s, when company after company bit the dust, having failed for 50 years to modernise their operations and their manufacturing techniques.

This time around, companies can't blame the workers or the trades unions. Employees have never worked as hard as they do in this new century, having to accept lousy wages and rotten working conditions. Trades unions have been completely devalued. Interestingly, the businesses that refuse to let their employees sign up with a union are often franchise holders of firms like Domino's, MacDonald's and Starbuck's who have to pay so much for the franchise their profit margins are squeezed almost to extinction, so all they can do is squeeze every last penny and every bead of sweat out of their employees.

Where did Jessop's, Zavi, Comet and HMV go wrong? Their directors lacked vision. This is, of course, what companies claim to be paying their top management huge salaries to show. You and I could see a decade ago that internet retailing could only grow. Did these super salesmen not see the change in the market? Why did they fail to react to the rise and rise of Amazon and the other internet giants?

HMV and co are not the only companies that are slow to respond to changes in the market. You only have to look at the state of M&S: in danger of losing their traditional client group but unable to work out who will be their new customers in ten or twenty years from now. Or how about supermarkets like Asda and Sainsbury's? They really haven't got their act together on their approach to the internet: their shop staff don't know what they are offering online, the goods in the stores are quite different to what's online and even if the same item is instore and online, the prices sometimes differ!

For me, worst of all is the lack of investment in staff training. Almost every week in stores I see a new employee being trained 'on the job' - that means, I suspect, learning as they go along from somebody on the same (basic) pay grade as them. If that's also happening in their internet service, I have a feeling this lack of investment in people will return to bite these companies on the bum - and sooner rather than later.