PEATS of Parnell Street..RIP (1 Viewer)

[GO]

http://www.peats.com/

Spent a lot of time and money in there over the years.

 

[CinnamonBoy]

Great back in the old days. Used to be able to buy half-broken personal stereos and the like for about £3 and solder them back to working order! Seemed like just another electronics shop staffed by knowitall wankers anytime I was in there in the last 5 years or so.

 

[washingcattle]

They were rude arrogant bastards. Good riddance.

 

[GO]

Yeah,I havent been in a good while.Bought a nice set of JBL speakers about 6 years ago and blew them within a month or two.

I remember building a transistor radio using a library book instruction and parts from Peats when I was about 12.

Edit..heres the book! http://www.amazon.com/dp/0721403247/?tag=thumpedcom-20

180 bucks!I sholuda purloined the Coolock library copy.

Good Times.

 

[steve albino]

They were rude arrogant bastards. Good riddance.

This, and well said at that.

 

[Diddles]

I got upset for about two minutes, in a Frawley's romantic Ireland's dead and gone type way. Then I remembered that they were overpriced and never had what I was looking for and the only reason I've gone in there in the last five years is to check the difference between what I bought online and the extortionate prices they charged.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

I went in looking for a card reader recently - €18 in peats vs €2 in the €uroworld or whatever it was called next door. still, i liked looking at stuff in there and never found them particularly rude.

 

[GO]

I forgot how expensive they were now you's you mention it.

Bloody Expensive!

 

[ann post]

if you shop online for product x you are not allowed to feel bad when local store for product x goes bust.

 

[ann post]

well you can if you like, but its a massive conflict of reality.

 

[Denny Oubidoux]

if you shop online for product x you are not allowed to feel bad when local store for product x goes bust.

this is true up to a point, beyond that its not true any more. the price difference might be the difference between buying the thing and not buying it at all and if theres one thing all of us need it's loads of stuff.

 

[GO]

I dont feel bad about the demise of anywhere that dosent give me value for money.

I felt a slight twang of nostalgia upon hearing this news though.

A twang that didnt last very long.

Nostalgia's for chumps.

 

[ann post]

this is true up to a point, beyond that its not true any more..

i'm pretty sure its true. if its the price you care about and not the store then you are talking about the price.

 

[Diddles]

If something is a tenner more in the local shop than it is online, but you want it that day, then you purchase it in the local shop. If it's a hundred euro dearer, then it's another kettle of fish and you are prepared to wait a week for it to be delivered.

Irish shops have NEVER got this basic principle, and that's one of the reasons why they're all going to the wall. They can blame upward only rents and the rise of online shopping all they like, but they never seem to blame their own greedy fucking business practices. Places like Peats were great at one time, but when the celtic tiger reared its ugly head they decided to rip the piss out of anyone with money in their wallet and an ignorance of online buying. Obviously that wasn't a sustainable business model. So fuck them. And fuck any other fucking business that made millions and millions from the purchasing power of the citizens of this country but hadn't the good grace to pass any of it back to it's customers or use their profits to create a sustainable business model and keep their employees in employment.

 

[rettucs]

didn't Emma Ledden used to work there?

not mentioned in her LinkedIn page though: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/emma-ledden/25/994/974

I thought that was how she got spotted. She used to appear on the Den every once in a while showing off gadgets, with her peats t-shirt on her.

 

[magicbastarder]

Irish shops have NEVER got this basic principle, and that's one of the reasons why they're all going to the wall. They can blame upward only rents and the rise of online shopping all they like, but they never seem to blame their own greedy fucking business practices.

yeah, mr. peat seems to have done fantastically well out of this.
if you claim that running a business with a shop floor in the city centre can cope against someone running out of a warehouse on the outskirts, with the attendant differences in rents, extra staff to man the floor, insurance, and what have you, you've got a bit of arguing to do to support that position.

i once went in to buy a scanner in a shop in town. when they quoted me the price, i mentioned that it could be had for a much lower price in a well-known online store. so the shop assistant showed me the wholesale price they were being charged by the manufacturer (this was not an independent distributor); the *wholesale* price the shop was being charged was about 5% or 10% higher than the retail price the online store were quoting.
the distributors give massive discounts for bulk, largely because they don't want to have to deal with relatively low-volume shops, it suits them much more to ship to high volume online retailers.

so don't be so fast to jump down the throats of the retailers.

 

[dudley]

didn't Emma Ledden used to work there?

not mentioned in her LinkedIn page though: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/emma-ledden/25/994/974

I thought that was how she got spotted. She used to appear on the Den every once in a while showing off gadgets, with her peats t-shirt on her.

i remember there was a girl called....trisha, maybe...from peats who used to come into the den, back in dempsey's time, and show off the latest games

 

[pete]

i used to go in there to look at the atari 800's & the boxes for the US import Infocom games way back when, before they moved across the road (before they moved BACK across the road). Good times.

But I too have memories of know it all staff & too-high prices. Still sad to see them go.


http://followgram.me/i/161242152466969724_1106852

 

[mark]

i made one major purchase in there a few yearsago which is still going strong, but for small things like headphones, different types of adaptors, transmitters etc etc, the were really, really pricey. between that and Game though, thats 200 people for the electronics retail sector out of a job. poxy.

 

[Scientician 0.8]

If something is a tenner more in the local shop than it is online, but you want it that day, then you purchase it in the local shop. If it's a hundred euro dearer, then it's another kettle of fish and you are prepared to wait a week for it to be delivered.

Irish shops have NEVER got this basic principle, and that's one of the reasons why they're all going to the wall. They can blame upward only rents and the rise of online shopping all they like, but they never seem to blame their own greedy fucking business practices. Places like Peats were great at one time, but when the celtic tiger reared its ugly head they decided to rip the piss out of anyone with money in their wallet and an ignorance of online buying. Obviously that wasn't a sustainable business model. So fuck them. And fuck any other fucking business that made millions and millions from the purchasing power of the citizens of this country but hadn't the good grace to pass any of it back to it's customers or use their profits to create a sustainable business model and keep their employees in employment.

I dunno about the particular margins of Peat's but if you have a retail outlet in Dublin or pretty much any city, it's nigh on impossible to price goods competitively against online. No matter what price most stores in Dublin city centre or wherever can price their goods at you're almost bound to find them cheaper online. Day to day running costs, per unit overheads, economics of scale etc. are different for online retailers and they're wiping the floor with their bricks and mortar competitors. This is happening in every developed economy it seems. I imagine that during the boom years people were that much less price sensitive when they had a few bob and just bought something when they saw it, regardless of it being available cheaper elsewhere, I also think as each year passes by, awareness of and participation in online retailing increases. I see magicbastarder has said similar to myself and I can corroborate from my own experience that in many instances the wholesale price of a good, to a small retailer especially, is often higher than the best prices available online.

I don't really want to start a rant about retail because all's fair in love and commerce, but I'd like to point out that an added nail in the coffin of independent retailers is the Wal-Mart style expansion of supermarkets into other consumer goods. Music, books, consumer electronics, and hardware items, as well as non-food seasonal necessities are all piled high and cheap in supermarkets, often as loss leaders. I can't fault people going to them for their bargains, why wouldn't they, but the practices of supermarkets make it harder for specialised stores to survive and thrive, especially in straitened times. For example, when the first few Harry Potter books came out, they were a significant boost to our sales, often moving 10s, even 100s of copies, no small deal for us anyway. For the latter launches the supermarkets were selling them cheaper I think than even Eason's could manage.

Having said all this, I don't give a flying fuck about Peat's really. I think I was in it once. They opened up a branch out here in the wilds I'd say only a year or two ago, perhaps they were overly ambitious in their expansion. I also think that most nostalgia for stores is a bit misplaced, use it or lose it. The same thing happened with Road Records. Everyone commented on how sad it was it was closing but then you had tonnes of comments on how they hadn't been there in years. There also just seems to be a natural cycle of retailers over time. If you look at a photo of an Irish main street even 30 years ago the difference would be startling, and it would be different again another 30 years previously. I do feel bad though for staff, especially longer term staff at all these places closing down. Sucks to be them/us.