Circuit City Closing! Woo-Hoo! Going out of Business Deals!

This really bites. Another one down.

Goody's Family Clothing (mentioned in that article) is headquartered here in Knoxville, and they're now liquidating. Corporate has emptied the building and sent 1100+ folks into the local job market. I know quite a few folks who (used to) work for Goody's, and this is going to be so rough on all the folks sent packing. Especially because they're all going to have to file claims in bankruptcy court to get things like severance, accrued vacation pay, and possibly their final paychecks.
 
lol
it was as easy as thier not chasing away clientele while shopping.
They chose this and failed.
which does indeed place them directly in line for one more W bail out/ natioanl debt.
 
I'm hoping something better will come of all this. That small businesses will flourish and provide more jobs. But, for now, the loss of 30,000 more jobs is no reason to celebrate. Good deals or not.
 
PK Gillock said:
I'm hoping something better will come of all this. That small businesses will flourish and provide more jobs. But, for now, the loss of 30,000 more jobs is no reason to celebrate. Good deals or not.
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The Circuit City in my town is already an empty building. We're getting a Best Buy though where the old CompUSA used to be.
 
Wow. 30,000 jobs lost. I agree with PK - this isn't a good thing and isn't a reason to celebrate.

How much worse can the economy get??
 
They just built a Circuit City near me in the old building vacated by CompUSA. It hasn't been open 6 months yet ... and now it's closing?
 
Maybe the next time we buy our electronics online because it's cheaper, we'll remember the passing of Circuit City, CompUSA and others. (And I'm sure there will BE others.)

I like getting great deals as much as the next guy. But I also like walking into a store and being able to handle and play with something before I buy it. I like being able to take it home and start using it that same day. I also like being able to walk back into that store and exchange or return it if it doesn't work or just doesn't suit my needs after all.

How many of us have gone into a store like Circuit City to look at and play with an item we were interested in, then walked out and gone home to order it off the 'net?

We can't just shop online for everything, just to get the rock bottom lowest price, and then lament the loss of jobs and the impact on people's families when the stores shut down.

I know, we're all hurting. I'm as poor as a churchmouse myself. But shopping locally when we can helps keep our communities alive.
 
i got one better

i got one better

Larry R said:
They just built a Circuit City near me in the old building vacated by CompUSA. It hasn't been open 6 months yet ... and now it's closing?
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they finished building it in october put the sign up in november and never opened it never even stocked it . it just sits there lit up and empty with brown cardboard taped to the windows
 
I worked for Circuit City from 1984 until 1990. It used to be a pretty good company back in the late 80s, they were really successful and expanded like crazy. But they were always haunted by a basically incompetent, slow to react management team at the top.

When Best Buy came in, Circuit City did not have an effective retail strategy against them and they lost all of that business and now they are done.

When I came into that business, I can recall Federated and Pacific Stereo, they were two competitors in the 80s who went under. I think it is somewhat cyclical in the electronics retail business but the worst part is that now there is no competition for Best Buy except the Internet. Less competiton is bad for the market and bad for all of us. Less choice and higher prices are the result. Sure, buying off of the Internet is great, but there are times when you need to go and see the product and try it to make sure that it is what you really want to buy.

Sad but they did it to themselves.

Dan
 
puredrifting said:
I worked for Circuit City from 1984 until 1990. It used to be a pretty good company back in the late 80s, they were really successful and expanded like crazy. But they were always haunted by a basically incompetent, slow to react management team at the top.

When Best Buy came in, Circuit City did not have an effective retail strategy against them and they lost all of that business and now they are done.

When I came into that business, I can recall Federated and Pacific Stereo, they were two competitors in the 80s who went under. I think it is somewhat cyclical in the electronics retail business but the worst part is that now there is no competition for Best Buy except the Internet. Less competiton is bad for the market and bad for all of us. Less choice and higher prices are the result. Sure, buying off of the Internet is great, but there are times when you need to go and see the product and try it to make sure that it is what you really want to buy.

Sad but they did it to themselves.

Dan
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It sort of sounds like Circuit City was the only game in town, so naturally they did great business until they had competition. Once Best Buy arrived, no one could expect Circuit City's sales to remain the same as they were when they had no real competition.

What was deficient about CC's retail strategy post-Best Buy?

I'm not sure that competition from Best Buy is what did them in. My first guess would be the same overall economic factors that are driving so many other businesses into bankruptcy. Any day now, Best Buy could go belly up as well. And even Radio Shack.
 
F them, i hate Circuit City with a passion. good ridance. NO offence to people that worked there.
 
mcgeedigital said:
You can't have one w/o the other.

It may be tragic, but there is no RIGHT to a job.
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I don't agree with that. If you have a hard working person and they lose their job, then yes, that's tragic. There's a chance that the person now won't be able to pay their rent and will be homeless because of that. That's tragic. I understand that's the way the world works, but it sucks.

Same thing with Emron. That was another tragedy. A LOT of people were screwed over and lost their job on top of that. Of course, the economy / job market was better then so the employees had a good chance to find something else without too much anguish. But when the unemployment rate is at 7%, 30,000 more people without jobs isn't good.
 
chapelgrovefilms said:
What was deficient about CC's retail strategy post-Best Buy?

I'm not sure that competition from Best Buy is what did them in. My first guess would be the same overall economic factors that are driving so many other businesses into bankruptcy. Any day now, Best Buy could go belly up as well. And even Radio Shack.
Click to expand...

Circuit City had a number of issues to overcome. Purchasers of consumer electronics are generally only price whores, they only care about price, as is proved by the numbers of people on this website who are trying to buy HPX170s from clip joints in Brookyln for $2,000.00. The management of Circuit City were convinced (now, remember, this is back in the 80s when I worked for them, not recently) that better customer services would bring customers back. Which I disagreed with strongly. People are shortsighted and primarily, at least in this country, shop based upon price. Best Buy had better pricing when they came into the market.

The second issue was perception. Circuit City had commissioned sales people, Best Buy has none commissioned order takers (although they have overall improved, once in a while you will now sometimes get someone helping you at Best Buy who knows a little bit about what they are selling but it is rare). The public perception was that the prices were higher at CC because of the commissioned salespeople.

Then you had the whole price comparison thing, which was honestly just retarded.

Circuit City didn't differentiate themselves in the market place as they could have/should have. They could have expanded into higher end lines ala The Good Guys. They could have had bigger stores (most CCs were pretty cramped and small, especially compared to the average Best Buy).

The mistakes go on and on. The bottom line was incompetent executives were running the company. The entire DIVX fiasco? Selling used cars? Frankly, they had their heads up their rears and the marketplace has eaten them up, because the marketplace changed and they didn't.

Dan
 
I just bought a Sony surround amp at Circuit City and had a good experience - declined the extended warranty...

The woman at the site-to-store counter talked about the good November they had and that December was going well. She seemed engaged and like she cared about her job, my experience and the company.

I got that in a ten minute interaction. I've had less perfect experiences at Circuit City and Best Buy, but I don't think the entire organization was defective. It's a top down issue in these cases and that 30k people are going to be looking for jobs is really unfortunate.

Big box has been an interesting experiment for America (and the world). I'll be interested to see where things go in 2009 and hope that people, wherever they work, make it through this unfortunate economy intact.

e
 
This one was self inflicted. The MBA's running this place thought it would be a great idea to get rid of all the employees who actually knew something and replace them with a bunch of high school electronic wizard wannabes. That plan worked great. Saved wage money all the way into liquidation.
 
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