Fopp's administrators (of the depressing 'company going under' kind, not the people who order the paper clips) yesterday announced that they were making the company's 700 plus workforce redundant following that announcement last week that the popular independent record retailer was closing its doors. As previously reported, staff at the chain's 105 stores, which included the Music Zone stores Fopp acquired earlier this year, were told last week that the company was going into administration following two weeks of speculation regarding the firm's future after it put all book orders on hold and then staged an impromptu stock take at the insistence of its bank.
Colin Dempster from joint administrator Ernst and Young said in a statement yesterday: "It is unfortunate that we have had to make these redundancies but we are not in a position to re-open the stores until we have the agreement of suppliers who control the licenses to sell stock".
Administrators are still open to offers to acquire the chain, but despite reports Virgin Megastore had shown some interest in the firm, it seems administrators are not currently in serious negotiations with any potential buyers. Dempster added in his statement yesterday: "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".
The chain's store managers will be retained in the short term to assist in the administrator's bid to assess the possibility of re-opening some of the Fopp stores.