I had a mandate once before, he was nice and bought me stuff but it just wasn’t my thing.

Always found B&Q staff to be really friendly and very helpful. I hope they get to keep their jobs.

Maybe if they didn’t have to deal with upward only rents things might be a little different.

Mandate will have their work cut out for them this year its only 1st of feb and already weve had hmv and now b&q

While high rents may be a big part of the problem, I’d say DIY retailers are suffering because the housing market collapse too and general contractions in consumer spending.

Compared to the peak of the property bubble, very few people are moving into new homes at the moment. Stores like B&Q are highly dependent on people decorating new homes i.e. they sell paints, papers, tiles, kitchens, bathrooms, furniture, electrical, plumbing, small project construction materials etc etc.

I suspect the Irish market for DIY gear has shrunk back to more normal levels where people are just doing the usual minor bits and pieces of refurbishment and maintenance on existing houses.

HMV’s situation was also to do with completely altered market conditions. The whole music industry has moved online. I think there’s perhaps too much blaming of piracy too. It’s more about legal purchase services like iTunes and streaming services like Spotify, Deezer etc Netflix and On-Demand services on cable/Sky etc are also gobbling up DVD sales. Selling music/video on shiny plastic disks isn’t really a viable business model anymore. – Storage is cheaper than ever (1TB+ for very little), computers are powerful, smart phones, tablets, and SmartTVs are appearing everywhere and broadband is getting really fast for a lot of people so downloads are easy i.e. you can get 50-150mbit/s in most urban areas on cable these days. (If you’re stuck out in the middle of nowhere on a long DSL line with dial-up speeds … you might need your shiny plastic disks for a little bit longer!)

Couple that with tighter consumer spending in the UK and Ireland and the writing was on the wall for an old bricks and mortar music retailer that hadn’t really adapted to the new business model.

I think the Government needs to be prepared for a major shake out in retail generally as a lot of business models are starting to show their weaknesses in this recession and more business is going online.

well at least the govt is creating thousands of new jobs and ……..!!!!!!!
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hang on…!!!!!!!

they are ramming all the GDP into the failed banks and talking sh*t to the irish people…….

well at least they aren’t just lapping up the state pay and wasting our time….

Rents won’t be the only problem. I’ve no intention of increasing my property tax liability so I won’t be doing any coosmetic work on my home until they axe the tax. Not even painting the front door. Many others feel the same. It will unfortunately mean the loss of many jobs in the DIY and Garden Centres but this government are too short sighted to see this.