Peats have gone out with dignity and integrity, an expensive and rare quality to have in any business today. Peats are ceasing trading while they can pay all their creditors, another rare quality. What they have done in their last act of trading should be held up as an example of how one should run and cease a business to all businesses in Ireland. Well done to Ben Peat and all your directors. I wish you all the very best in your future endeavours.

Peats customer service was great but the costs for same were considerable, esp when compared to online operations. i don’t think it was ever going to be possible for them to survive once people became more cost conscious than during the boom, esp when they were targeting the higher end of the market with products like B&O and Bose.

I suspect we will see more and more migration to online shopping from the high street as time goes by. the likes of travel agents and insurance brokers were in the vanguard of businesses to transition, the likes of game, hmv and xtravision are currently going in the process of transition,

next will be more and more of the high street shops, esp retails this is obliviously something many of them are acutely aware of at present as more and more try to entice customers to their online presence often even directly from within the store (next are a good example of this).

Grocery retailers, etc will probably take up the rear guard though this has already commenced with the likes of Tesco & superquinns online order and delivery service.

of course there will always be a market for both retail and online the trick for the larger retailers will be in finding the balance to ensure they maintain market share and margin.

for the small business operator this will become even harder and will require them to focus on offering services that online operators can’t / won’t compete with. unfortunately in a major recession where everyone is cost conscious this will be exceedingly difficult but not impossible.

A huge loss now we are left with the hard core sales pitch from Curries Harvey Norman and PC World with staff who have no product knowledge and will tell you anything to make a sale

Agreed. I grew with peats as the only decent electronics store in Dublin.
What a shame they didn’t make it.

Sadly we’ll never see the likes of their first class expertise and one to one friendly customer service again in our
Land..
A special thank you to all their helpful staff and may they never see a hungry Day.!!!!

Well done Alan that needs to be said Irish people don’t care about indigenous companies.
The Irish consumer doesn’t think a company is significant unless they are big in the UK.
M&S Tesco Aldi Lidl have put Superquinn almost out of business and Dunnes struggling but the Irish don’t care
So much for patriotism

I grew up near Peats of Parnell St and while it’s a shame they’re gone I don’t understand people getting emotional after they close. If more had shopped there before they got into trouble sure they wouldn’t have had to close.

yep quite a few…. but it will be mised. It was a corner stone.

Is there any place left like Peats in Ireland?

Used to go into town to the original parnell st store in early 90s. Sad to say price won out in recent times against online competitors.

Peats prices were in line with competitors. Also staff were very knowledgeable. They were tops for hardware parts. Actually not possible to get the same retail service elsewhere. Highs rents and decline in sales since 2008 brought Peats to this.

Anyone thinking of running a retail shop today with online competition would be mad! The extortionate cost of rents in Ireland and the high staff costs would give the business the kiss of death before it was born. The problem is that there are too many parasites attached to running your own business today. Insurance, utilities and other overheads are enough to frighten anyone off running a shop, unless you have identified a niche business which is bank proof, bureaucrat proof and recession proof. A tough call.

People need to realise how hard it is for an independent retailer to compete with internet giants like Thomann and Amazon.If the wholesalers don’t give the shop a good price then the retailer can’t pass it onto the customer.It’s almost impossible to match online prices while remaining profitable unless you can buy large quantities of product and then have somewhere to store it. I try to buy as much as i can locally because i want to have those stores there when i need something in a hurry and the Internet retailers are no good to you, no matter how cheap they are, when you need something in minutes.

It is a fact of business life that success is not compulsory. Businesses have to keep up or die. The pace of change, particularly in consumer electronics and IT is astonishing and retail survival, let alone growth, as to be wored at every day.

As for customer service, it still exists and, in my exerience, improving. I am particularly impressed with the efforts that younger service staff will put in to give customer satisaction.

Petes was great throughout the years but in recent times their prices have been far too ambitious! I feel they didn’t take the necessary moves to properly compete with online buying and lower priced competitors (such as richer sounds)

Peats, not pears…

Sad to see an old established business close. We are a small family business in the west of Ireland.
I would say that not many of our type of business have survived, we are one of the few remaining general drapery &bar filmily business surviving. Established in 1929 by my parents and inherited by me in 1979 (deprecision 1979/1986) we survived by hard work and loyalty from our customers.
We modernised in 1980 and again 1999 when my son (1of 6 children ) joined the firm. In 2008 we enhanced our business by expanding into screen printing &embroidery to cater for a vacume which we felt existed . This has been a great success as we cater for stag parties and all schools and companies.
We are still a general household and drapery company with an off-licence(4Ds.) and
catering ladies, children & gents, even for the older person who wants red flannel for that back wool yarns&haberdashery we have the old fashioned interlock knickers. Look us up on http://www.fordes.ie
Again sad to see Petes closing.

J.G.F.

The strange thing about Peats was that they tookover the Sony Shops at the worst possible time. That struck me as less than wise. Its unfortunate as there must have been many staff hit.

This is part one of a really, really cool series on this topic. It’s about ‘corporate America’, but as this shows, it’s kind of happening everywhere – the slow corrosion of these businesses that have a human face in favour of something much worse.

Also, Louis CK is the main dude in this, which is a huge treat if you’re a fan of his :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IndWcEnFhTQ

What a bull, Peats lost it’s value years ago. Overpriced crap.

Peats were overpriced and didn’t stock enough of the latest products. There is no place for shops like this. Move on and look to the future. Who really cares if this rip off shop is gone?

fair play to peats,, sorry to see them go,, but I will say this,, one of my less memorable working experiences,, sorry guys