Grainger Games Closes All 67 Stores In The UK

Grainger Games Shuts all 67 stores with immediate effect

You may not have heard of Grainger Games, but that’s not necessarily your fault. Ultimately it comes down to where you live. In the UK, however, they represented one of the largest independent games stores. Similar to other high street gaming stores, they sold games, paraphernalia and trade-ins.

Based in the North of England sadly, the company has announced the immediate closure of all 67 stores resulting in the loss of around 390 jobs.

Closed

It marks the end of another high street company, albeit, as above, perhaps best known by certain people. The writing was, however, on the wall. In 2017 the company posted an operating loss of over £1m. A little over a week ago all credit lines to the company were terminated and as such, save a miracle, the closures were almost guaranteed.

In a report via the BBC, the company boss has said that the main factor of the companies difficulty was the huge “over-reliance” on 2nd hand games. Just to put this marketing model into some clarity, when it comes to 2nd hand games the business is simple, buy low and sell high. In brief, profit margins are far greater on 2nd hand games than on brand new ones.

At least, as can be seen in the above image, some of the staff had a sense of humor about it all.

Online purchases!

The store has also blamed the success of online digital downloads for bringing physical media to the brink of existence. Overall though, personally I just find it sad that an independent retailer specializing in games has gone under. When you consider our high street options, it doesn’t look good at the moment. Heaven forbid we should have to rely on ‘Game’.

What do you think? Did you know about Grainger games? Sad to hear them go? – Let us know in the comments!