Attention reporters: Would you please stop blaming Circuit City's failure on the credit crunch? Circuit City's problems go back for many years, starting with the fact that shopping there is unpleasant and frankly there are more Best Buy stores in convenient locations. Ditto for CompUSA. They went belly up not because of the economy but because PCs are a commodity and boxed software is no longer a big seller.If I want to browse the widest possible selection of stuff, Fry's is right around the corner. I'd rather deal with Fry's because their black-tied, white short-sleeved shirt employees don't get in your face every five seconds. I'd never even consider Circuit City.
Remember the mad dash to erect mega home improvement and sporting good stores during the 1990s? A couple of big chains went under. Builders Square was one of them. Sports Authority is still around, but I question their viability... the one near my house has always been a ghost town and I have never figured out how they can keep the doors open.
Even in a perfect economy we are over-retailed. That's the real problem.
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Remember Incredible Universe? Those Tandy run Fry's on steroids? Those had the stink of death on them before they opened since Tandy and all its minions (Radio Shack) were commission sales based stores. I worked at Radio Shack and the sales model we were taught (which is starkly close to CC's) is to hammer the sale to close and then upsell the living crap out of them. Funny, but people don't seem to like that.
BB used to be haranged by Wall Street since they didn't aggressively upsell things like extended warranties. Wall Street saw it as leaving money on the table. CC used to be the darling and BB was the also ran.
Wall St wins again with the pulse on main street again.
I remember Incredible Universe. I am reminded of it every time I drive by that HCC campus (?) on 610 just south of the Galleria. I never set foot into it. :-)
There are some good comments on Rob's blog about how Radio Shack still survives, like a cockroach. Radio Shack is still round because they keep their costs low, in low-rent/no-rent strip centers.
Plus they survive by filling a very tiny and ever shrinking niche market of hobbyists. They long ago abandoned their core group and became just another electronics and consumer item (read cell phone) store. Places like NewEgg.com have cleaned their clocks in their old core market.
That lying sob that was their CEO that decided their future was Compaq's, Sprint, and DirectTV really killed them.
Actually, the only reason BB is not in the same boat is that they bought Geek Squad. That has put them in the black the past few years. Otherwise they would be in the red as well.
Personally, CC takes waaaaaay better care of their customers than Best Buy. Ever try to make a return at BB? Not fun.
CC customer service seemed to be able to "bend the rules" slightly to make customers happy. At best buy, you have to make a scene to get any satisfaction because everything is by the book and there is no discretion given to employees to keep customers satisfied within reason.
CC going down warms the cockles of my black heart. I got the worst car stereo installation in the history of history there, and vowed to never darken their door again. That was in 1989, and I always keep my vows.
I have sadly moved out of the realm of Fry's, the true paradise of the techno-geek. I love the idea of a store that sells RAM, ICs in rails, oscilloscopes, motherboards, computers, cases of Mountain Dew, condoms, TVs, telephones, games, toothpaste, and speakers all under one roof. I could practically live there.
My technology-buying life has become a combination of Best Buy and Newegg (and Radio Shack for when I need some weird audio cable right away). CC cannot die fast enough.
Gosh, there is a great deal of worthwhile material above!
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