Woolies' woe gives industry wobbles in Christmas period.

Contingency plans in place as administrators called in

News of Woolworths' move into administration last week, while hardly unexpected, sent shockwaves through an industry gearing up for the Christmas period.

Woolworths itself had a 10.7% unit share of the albums market in 2007, according to the TNS Audio Visual Trak Survey, second only to HMV, while EUK is the UK's main distributor of music product to clients including Zavvi, Asda, Sainsbury's and the Woolworths chain itself.

Zavvi CEO Simon Douglas spent the latter half of last week in meetings attempting to resolve the crisis and the retailer would only say that Douglas was "in constant dialogue with administrators". Zavvi would not say if the decision would affect its pre-Christmas sales.

Asda reveals that it had taken the extraordinary step of buying copies of Take That's The Circus direct from Universal.

"We are putting contingency plans in place, working closely with administrators, but we are confident that customers won't know the difference," an Asda spokesman explains. "We do buy direct on some occasions - we have existing relationships with some big studios. We have Take That CDs in position."

Deloitte's Jamie Harley says that trading will continue as normal at both EUK and Woolworths while they look for a buyer, with Woolworths set to remain open as normal until Christmas has passed. However, there were unconfirmed reports of disruption at EUK.