Bureau Direct Has Ceased Trading

This was copied and pasted from the Stationery Wednesday email that I received today:

The Final Edition

Yes, that's right. After far more editions of Stationery Wednesday than I have managed to work out (but it must be getting on towards 1,000 surely?) it is time to say goodbye.

As of now we have ceased trading. Sadly the difficulties of surviving in these turbulent times has claimed another retail victim, one that will never hit the headlines or be discussed on Newsnight, but maybe should because so many similar stories will occur and affect so many people but never get heard.

So that's 23 years of Bureau, almost to the day, 15 of them spent online. That's a lifetime for many. As always the ride has had its ups and downs, but what I would like to say is a personal goodbye to all Stationery Wednesday readers. Over the years I have had so many nice replies that it has eased the stress of writing an original email each week. Stationery Wednesday often came after Stressful Tuesday!

The other great pleasure over the years has been the staff who have worked here. It really has been like an extended family and it was especially sad saying goodbye to Des, Monica and Faisal at the end. Days you hope you won't repeat. But despite everything there has been an overwhelming sense of warmth towards us, the business and what we tried to do from the staff, customers and suppliers. So thank you. I'm sorry it didn't work out in the end.

Goodbye to all and I hope you find something suitable to keep you busy on a Wednesday.

Dominic


A Word From Jo

It is hard to put into writing how it feels after 23 years to have to walk away from Bureau: It has been our life after all. But, along with all the other retail casualties of recent times, we have been sunk by the uncertainty and the discounting that seems to stalk the high street - online is not immune either.

We have tried so hard this year to hang on, hoping it would get better, but despite the support of so many of you it just got harder. I can only say it leaves me quite broken and I am in tears as I write but I really do want to thank you all.

Some of you we talked to on the phone, some we chatted to on email, some we only knew by the names that popped up so regularly on the orders. But we felt we knew you all. In the end the real pleasure of Bureau was not really the stationery but the fantastic staff team, both past and present and all of you - ever loyal, often funny and always with an eye for a nice pen or notepad.

Cheers

Jo

Sad news. :(

Very sad news. Just got my last order from them delivered yesterday; didn't know it was the last when I opened it, but by the time I was flattening the box the email had arrived. :(

No idea whether it was a contributing factor in this case, but when Lamy decided to insist that stockists must have a physical retail outlet I did wonder how many specialist retailers we might lose as a result of them trying to comply.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by grainweevil

Very sad news. Just got my last order from them delivered yesterday; didn't know it was the last when I opened it, but by the time I was flattening the box the email had arrived. :(

No idea whether it was a contributing factor in this case, but when Lamy decided to insist that stockists must have a physical retail outlet I did wonder how many specialist retailers we might lose as a result of them trying to comply.

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Yes, very sad. I don't know if had anything to do with Lamy, but I don't know if BD had a B&M store at their address in London.

They had a sort of shop-in-the-warehouse deal, as far as I know. Not the commitment that, say, The Writing Desk has made, but still if margins are tight... Of course, being in London, everything costs that much more, which can't help at all. Not sure where is left in London for the FP enthusiast now? Sad times.

Truly sad, one of the good shops...

Very sad to hear this, although I only used their services intermittently. But their website is still up, and makes no mention of the fact that they're no longer trading as far as I can tell...

Here's much of what I wrote on another forum - I suspect they were struggling for a while and hoping X-Mas would pull them through, but it was a bad year across the board in the UK. I wonder if the creditors were called in on them, which would have resulted in their having to lock up and hand over the keys - if the details of the website were inside, that would be it.

Except on the 10th, on their Facebook page, amongst other things they wrote "The site should be dealt with today to avoid further confusion" and subsequently also managed to email everyone on their mailing list with an invitation to sign up to be informed of whatever next venture they went into. So they really didn't feel as if they were shut out of everything.

I am sure these guys were able to open a new business, and now they are working with pleasure again. Changes are always scary, but they are necessary if you want your life not to stand still. For example, I had to change my life because of the pandemic drastically. When I was fired, I decided to try to make at least some money in trading, and now I use metatrader multiterminal because I realized that this is exactly the way to make money that makes me happy. Everything is changing, and you should never lose heart.

Wait for it...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Wile E Coyote

Wait for it...

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SPAM

:)

bazinga