Boards
The Demise of Fopp (pt 2)
Apologies to those who have read the first post, which I asked for admin to delete last Friday (22
June) in the somewhat naive hope that I was going to keep my job, and therefore not want an anti-
Fopp rant to appear acorss the ether.
But at 4:34 pm today (Thu 28 June 2007), that all changed, so fuck them to high heaven.
For the last few weeks, at least six I'd imagine, we've not received stock from the majors;
Universal, Sony BMG, Pinnacle, etc. Nothing was thought of it, too much, at store level. Fopp
started to source new DVDs through third-parties such as S.Golds. All was well for a week or two,
until we realised that we weren't getting new release CDs before they were due onsale. Bit of a
fucking bummer, that, but still we soldiered on.
It soon clicked that Fopp's "takeover" of Music Zone wasn't the miracle that it was painted to be.
Music Zone went tits up... Fopp bought out Music Zone after they went bankrupt thinking they could
get the Music Zone stock for next-to-nothing.
Fopp was very wrong. Despite Music Zone's bankruptcy, their suppliers continued to bill Fopp for
the stock.
To cut a long story short, 6 days ago we were told to stop taking credit cards "due to ongoing
negotiations" with the bank. Then Securicor were told to stop collecting money from the safe.
Last Friday, the day after we were told to stop accepting card payments, we were told to close for
"stocktaking".
After opening the following day (Sat 23 June), we continued as normal.
At 16:34, Thu 28 June, we all received an e-mail instructing us to "cease trading with immediate
effect whilst we resolve the wage payments, our refinancing and seek reinstatement of the
suppliers' licence to sell."
Please note that, "Regretfully, the company is unable to pay this month's wages."
Most likely due to the fact that each store has not 'banked' any money for the last week. Meaning that, even in a small store like ours, there is about eight grand sat in the safe.
What a fucking bunch of bollocks.
And to think that I got my balls squeezed over the original post last Friday about the Fopp dilemma. Well, bollocks to it. Fopp... you are run by a bunch of utter fucking clowns.