Jessops

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is about the British photographic retailer. For the department store, Jessops of Nottingham, see John Lewis (department store).

Jessops plc

Type	Public (LSE: JSP)
Founded	1935
Headquarters	Leicester (HQ)
Key people	CEO: TBA Chairman: David Adams
Industry	Retail
Products	Photographic Equipment
Revenue	▲ £327 million GBP (2005) [1]
Employees	2981 (Dec 2005)
Website	www.jessops.com

Jessops is Britain's largest specialist photographic retailer, with 233 stores nationwide. Many branches contain mini-labs that can offer one hour processing or even a 30 minute express service. All branches now have facilities for digital processing through self-service kiosks.

Frank Jessop opened "Jessop of Leicester" in 1935 as a specialist photographic retailer. The company expanded to major towns and cities, with flagship 'World Camera Centres' in Birmingham, on London's New Oxford Street and on Deansgate in Manchester with the latest opened in Cardiff. The 200th store opened in Durham in July 2001.

The Jessops catalogue, available free from the stores, is traditionally regarded by amateurs as the enthusiast's bible. It is usually released quarterly.

Alan Jessop, Frank's son, sold the firm in 1996 in a management buy-out. ABN AMRO paid £116m for the company in 2002, and then floated the company on the London Stock Exchange in October 2004 Yahoo Finance.

Jessops remains based in Leicester, with the head office on Scudamore Road. In 2004, the main warehouse was relocated to Weedon, Northamptonshire as the warehouse in Leicester was considered too small. This resulted in most of the staff being made redundant.

Jessops also sell via their website, which boasts an average of 25 million hits a month.

William Rollason, non-executive director and chairman of the remuneration committee for Jessops – and last CEO of European Home Retail – has been implicated in the October 2006 Farepak scandal.[2]

1 Sister Companies
2 Financial problems
3 External links
4 References

[edit] Sister Companies

Cameras2u [Website]
Tecno [Website] (now redirects to Jessops.com)
Jessops Mobiles [Website] (site no longer in operation)
Shopping4Cameras [Website] (now redirects to Cameras2u)
Satnav2u [Website] (now redirects to Jessops.com)

[edit] Financial problems

In 2007 the company has suffered financial difficulties. This seems to be due to problems arising from its share flotation,^[1] the maturation of the digital camera market (competition from supermarkets and internet retailers) and lower-than-expected sales figures over Christmas 2006.^[2] On June 21, 2007 Jessops announced the closure of 81 of its 315 stores as "part of a strategic review which aims to save the Leicester firm £15m."^[3]