Jessops, the camera retailer, which collapsed in January with £81m of debts, is set to re-open its doors today as part of wider plans to open over 30 stores over the next month.

Peter Jones, the well-known entrepeneur from the BBC's Dragons' Den programme, bought the Jessops brand, stock and other assets from administrator PwC as part of a joint venture.

The first two shops opened today on London's Oxford Street and in Birmingham. They will be followed by another four this weekend, and then 30 more by the end of April. It had initially been thought Jessops would operate as an internet-only brand.

Jones, who becomes chairman and chief executive of the retailer, said he then hopes to open a store a day during the month of April.

'Jessops has a reputation which is well known. We know Jessops is the number one brand, and I love it. I believe there's going to be a real transition in terms of what online means. People don't want to have to worry about home deliveries and not being there to collect items they've ordered,' Jones told the Telegraph.

'We've evaluated how we can cover the UK with roughly 40 stores to allow a collect-in store model, which people want with products like ours because they are technical products.'

Jones said the business can be run with central costs of £1.5m a year, significantly less than the old Jessops business where costs were closer to £8m a year.

Jones paid between £1.5- £2m to PwC for the assets, and has already pumped in another £2m and said that his total investment would probably hit £5m by the end of April.

The turnaround programme will create around 500 jobs, with around half being ex-Jessops employees who were made redundant when the company's 192 shops shut in January resulting in 2,000 employees losing their jobs.

When it collapsed, business partners and creditors - including HMRC - were owed a combined £81m.

HMRC was owed £1.3m in unpaid VAT, National Insurance and PAYE contributions, while the single largest creditor, HSBC, was left £28.8m out of pocket from the loan it initially lent to the failed chain. Other losers included camera manufacturers Nikon and Canon - who despite receiving £23m in returned stock - expect to see a shortfall of almost £20m as a result of the collapse.