How About
World of PC Dix Phone Currys
Not since 1990 has there been a need for carphones so drop the name already.
Carphone Warehouse, Dixons embroiled in £3.7bn merger rumour
Sir Charles Dunstone once told your humble correspondent that he would never have more than 50 shops. Today his Carphone Warehouse empire has more 2,000 shops across Europe, and is rumoured to be about to add another 500 – through a merger with PC World and Currys owner Dixons. Discussions have been going on since February, …
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Thursday 8th May 2014 15:55 GMT I ain't Spartacus
Re: I was in Carphone Warehouse, during lunch,
Yeah. I've talked to Carphone Warehouse staff who knew what they were talking about - and could answer complex technical questions. When I was away a friend went in for help with his Galaxy Note II, and the guy zoomed through a bunch of settings and showed them some of what was up, and suggested a possible fix. Rather than trying to sell them a Note III, or going um.
Last time I was in PC World (with the same friend) they couldn't even tell me the spec of the laptop they were holding in their hand. All I wanted was what graphics chip it had, it was for custom CAD. It wasn't on their website either, so I had to look it up on my phone, from their small business advisor's desk.
The guy I'd asked a question of 5 minutes before simply looked down and started reading off the price/product details card a foot in front of me. Cheers! I never thought of that. Fortunately that one was turned on, so I could just ask it to tell me what goodies it had inside.
The only time I've been there and 4 of them have approached me and asked if I wanted help. Rather than the usual of having to lasso the buggers, as they run away.
There's too many elements to make anything out of the name. Other than maybe a poem? Haiku anyone...
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Thursday 8th May 2014 15:41 GMT Timbo
oh dearie me...
...Carphone Wharehouse's aborted "joint venture" with Best Buy failed badly, and in the meantime Comet went bust, Dixons stores vanished and then Currys and PC World merged some (most?) of their stores, one assumes to reduce overheads as well as competition (as it was easy to get a "deal" by getting one to price match against the other)..
The truth behind all of this is that domestic consumer electronics is now a "volume" product, sold not by specialists, but by the likes of supermarkets...and just as multi-branch chains of record shops, shoe shops, department stores, et al have all more or less vanished from the high street.....so this merger could be the "last call" for a nationwide chain of electrical stores.
And then the likes of Tesco Extra, ASDA etc would almost have the market to themselves (save for any independant hi-fi or Euronics stores).
(And yes I'm old enough to remember Laskys, Rumbelows, etc all of whom have failed long before the Internet !)
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Thursday 8th May 2014 16:30 GMT cmgangrel
So now DSG is trying to get back into the phone market after they sold off The Link back in the tail end off 2006.
Guess it just goes to show how it was.
Yes, I worked for The Link, and as a slight tech nerd, always tried to have to hand information about the phones/hardware that I was selling. Give a good service, get the customers back for more stuff.
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Thursday 8th May 2014 19:21 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "50:50 merger of equals" - tosh
You're bang on, mate.
But one has to worry about the rationale for the deal "synergies between the two businesses". This is corporate claptrap for "there is no good reason for this deal, but maybe we'll find some change down the back of the sofa".
Total synergies are the administrative cost of one of the two listed companies' head offices, circa £10m. Deal fees to the wasters at City banks will be five times that as a minimum, legal fees another million, management consultants the same again, devising a new group name and brand identity another million, redundancy and restructuring costs about £5m. Because DSG is a product retailer, and CPW is a contract retailer there will be no real operational benefits, and neither will benefit from each other.
As usual this is corporate M&A as a diversion from the hard work of actually running a profitable, successful business. In line with other comments, I've found CPW staff OK, but as vendors of high value contracts they're probably being paid a lot more than the Currys and PCW plebs, so no CPW competence will rub off on the box shifters - if anything it'll work the other way round as dysfunctional management cyborgs from PCW try and borg CPW.
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Sunday 11th May 2014 09:18 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: "50:50 merger of equals" - tosh
I remember the coming together of EDS and HP being touted as a merger.
I suppose the act of shafting can be technically be regarded as a 'merger' but history suggests one of the two groups will be ground out of existence.
I assume one financial benefit will be the release of all the small CPW shops.
I doubt there is space for a Currys in most of them.
However mobile phones are best sold from small town centre stores.
Bad result would be the transfer of all CPW retail into Currys stores with sales covered by existing staff.
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Thursday 8th May 2014 19:23 GMT h3
Anything that is bad for Phones4U is good for me. (Cannot think of anybody other than Ryanair that I would like to have anything to do with less. Never managed to complete a purchase with them as they have p*ssed me off every single time before I actually managed to pay but still leaving say 30 mins wasted.)
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Thursday 8th May 2014 20:26 GMT Anonymous Coward
Hardly a marriage of equals then?
In naming the merged business, I predict they will adopt the following formula:
- Take the first two words of Carphone Warehouse Group
- And the last word of Dixons Store Group.
I'm trying to remember the names of a couple of firms I used to work for. It's hard; almost as if they'd been erased from history, leaving a hole in my head.
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Biting the hand that feeds IT
