Robert Lindsay
Stories and Songs on today's free French CD, with The Times
Ernst & Young, the receivers and administrators of the music chain Fopp, today dismissed 700 of the 800-strong workforce as it has so far failed to win agreement from suppliers such as Universal, Sony BMG and EMI to continue trading.
Colin Dempster, one of the joint administrators, said: "It is unfortunate that we have had to make these redundancies but we are not in a position to reopen the stores until we have the agreement of suppliers who control the licenses to sell stock."
The chain owes about £20 million to creditors, including its bank, HBOS.
Of this about £10 million is owed to suppliers, including Universal Music, Sony BMG, EMI, Plastic Head Music Distribution and ESD Wholesale.
Mr Dempster said: “We would urge anyone with a genuine interest in taking on stores as going concerns to contact us immediately. In the meantime, we wanted to ensure that employees have the opportunity to claim their statutory entitlements through the Redundancy Fund as soon as possible."
About 100 store managers are being kept on in case anyone comes forward to buy the 81 stores.
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I could not believe that Fopp has closed. It was an excellent way to discover new music at reasonable prices and to re-buy remastered versions of all those LPs I once owned. The Dundee shop was always busy and I personally will miss Fopp very much. It is worrying the way 'smaller' and independent shops are going out of existence (although I understand now that Fopp may have overstrecthed itself!)
I just hope that someone will continue the concept that was Fopp.
Phil Jackson, Letham, Angus
I managed a store for Fopp, and I have to say I was not surprised to hear of it collapsing. I fortunately left the company about a month before it went under, but my heart goes out to all the brilliant staff who have been well and truly left out in the cold. Fopp was a vibrant and excellent music store before it's acquisition of the floundering MusicZone, and it's such a shame for music fans all over the country that the people upstairs who made the decision to buy MusicZone have let their greed ruin what was a true one off. Long Live Fopp.
Jo, Warwick, UK
Some ex employees have made a community site on myspace, so search myspace for fopp and you'll get a save fopp page. There is some information that can help?!
Evan, CIrencester, Gloucestershire
I, fortunatly, left the company a week before it went into receivership but the company failed to tell me it was closing and not paying its staff, I only found out when i couldn't take out any money come pay day, I now am over my overdraft, paying fees and losing interest on the money I had to remove from an ISA to pay my way through the month!! and all this AFTER LEAVING THE COMPANY!!! Thank god I moved to Virgin Megastores!!
Rob, Southend, Essex
I worked for musiczone / fopp (FLOP)
Shame that no one had the time to tell me that the company did not have the money to pay me! But still sent me a payment slip in the post & now I have gone overdrawn with my bank & got extra bank charges for D/D's when there were no funds... & still no paper work to show my bank or mortgage company..
I've had to work all this month with no wage to cover me for this period of time which goes for me & all my work colleagues
What a sad and dissapointing way to end a business!!!
Paul Hilton, Manchester, Lancashire
How am i to get my money iam owed for 6 wks work,holidays due back to me and overtime??!!!!
Helen, Manchester,