More bad news on the High Street – ModelZone are going into Adminstration.
“On 26 June 2013, Richard Michael Hawes, Nicholas Guy Edwards and Robert James Harding of Deloitte LLP were appointed Joint Administrators of Modelzone Holdings Limited, The Amerang Group Limited, Modelzone Limited and Amerang Limited (together the “Companies”). The affairs, business and property of the Companies are being managed by the Joint Administrators. The Joint Administrators act as agents of the Companies only and contract without personal liability. The Joint Administrators are authorised by the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW). All licensed Insolvency Practitioners of Deloitte LLP are licensed in the UK”
Like Jessops and HMV, Modelzone is the sort of business that relies on people’s discretionary spending and is always at risk from being hit hard in a recession. And like them it’s in competition with online box-shifters who don’t have the overheads of maintaining an expensive high-profile retail presence.
I’m quite a regular customer of my local branch. Although they’re not perfect, with a fairly limited stock of N-gauge (They don’t stock Dapol’s range at all), as a supplier of things like scenic material they’d be greatly missed should the branch or indeed the whole chain not survive.
My take home pay this month is the first stable pay packet since February and I am therefore in a position to asses the effects of a backdated pay rise and the change in the tax rates. Despite a small gross pay rise and a favorable tax code change (thank you LibDems for the increased personal allowance) my net pay has fallen. The cause: an increase in my National Insurance contribution.
Discretionary expenditure may have to take the hit as our previous monthly surplus to savings has been wiped by my wife changing to part time (due to childcare commitments so it is for the best possible reason).
But how this government can expect people to spend our way out of recession under these conditions baffles me.
I did visit my local Modelzone on Friday, and the staff there seem confident that their branch will survive.
From a thread on the RMweb Forum