Circuit City is DEAD

[sallysue]

a "LULL" would be putting it mildly.
And that "quote" was a dig aimed at me, had as much to do with reality as anything
else the poster puts up...
MAINLY, NOTHING

Roger dodger...

Also if things start to get rough I might have to start packing heat, that is 600 to a 1000
right there

.

Are you gonna shoot yer speakers?

[Rich-n-Texas]

...My receiver could stand to be replaced (and might) but the amps sound good,
and there are no new features I cant work around, and its got a phono preamp,
something rapidly disapearing.

Hmmm... my old receiver didn't have phono inputs, but my 3800 does.

SMALL (pun intended) WONDER that the current CES is focusing on handheld portable devices, inexpensive stuff that wont hit you hard .

So why was 3D HDTV at the top of your list in your sad "CES tidbits" thread?

[Woochifer]

Whoochifer probably isn't old enough to remember but less than ten years ago all sales staff at C.C. were required to wear a full suit on the sales floor, know their stuff,and were compensated well. As far as training goes C.C.'s was head and shoulders above any other major retailer. The benefits there were (at one time) very competitive, they had health insurance and paid sick leave, 401k, vacation, and it was not uncommon for a good sales man to make close to 100k a year( ans this was in the nineties). All of this though went by the way side about 8 years ago when they and the Good Guys went in together to push DIVX and they lost some hundreds of millions of dollars. This eventually tanked Good Guys. C.C.'s stock plummeted over night from $45.00 to $9.00 a share and they have never recovered. So to make a short story long, yes Whoochifer , at one time they were a classy company.

Well, maybe my assessment was a tad harsh, but I am old enough to go back more than 20 years when several friends of mine worked at different electronics stores. Compared to the places where they were working, Circuit City was considered the place of last resort. All of those stores also required their sales reps to wear dress shirts and ties, and even now Fry's and Magnolia (including the locations inside BB) still have similar dress codes.

At places like the defunct Rogersound Labs and Good Guys chains, new hires were required to go through days of training at the company headquarters. At Good Guys, the new hires were limited to selling personal devices and video games. They could not sell any mobile, video, and audio components until they had worked there for close to a year, and gotten certified to sell the products in those sections. As their financial position got more precarious, they pared that back considerably and the company's customer service nose dived. Like Circuit City, they also fired most of their sales staff and hired a bunch of newly scrubbed hourly employees shortly before they went belly up, but unlike CC they kept their top sales reps (who were also pulling six figures) on commission.

When a friend of mine was between jobs, he got a position at CC and said that they pretty much threw the new hires on the floor the same day with minimal product training. Just a briefing on procedures and how to work the point-of-sale system. Maybe things tightened up during the 90s, but I remember Circuit City being a step down from the other electronics stores as a place to work.

[JSE]

No wonder they are going out of business. They just built a gigantic store a few miles from my house in a new shopping center. They started back in October. The thing is huge! I'm guessing a minimum of several million in construction costs alone. The problem is, it still has never opened! Probably never will now. There have been people working there filling it with inventory for the last month so I peaked through a rip in the brown paper on the windows and it looked like it's ready to open. Fully stocked and just sitting there. The shelves are full, lights are on, but no workers. Kindof eary?

[Woochifer]

No wonder they are going out of business. They just built a gigantic store a few miles from my house in a new shopping center. They started back in October. The thing is huge! I'm guessing a minimum of several million in construction costs alone. The problem is, it still has never opened! Probably never will now. There have been people working there filling it with inventory for the last month so I peaked through a rip in the brown paper on the windows and it looked like it's ready to open. Fully stocked and just sitting there. The shelves are full, lights are on, but no workers. Kindof eary?

They started doing a lot of this when they doubled the size of their new store prototype to about 60,000 square feet in order to compete with Best Buy whose typical stores are even larger. Close to my house, Circuit City vacated their existing store location, and built two brand new store buildings within a few miles. In so many cases, they built a brand new store less than two miles from their a vacated store, and wind up paying leases on two buildings in the meantime.

Strange that they would continue to construct new stores while they closed more than 200 locations back in November. Nice of them to provide a brand spanking new location for a liquidation sale, given that all of those brand new store fixtures and inventory now belong to the liquidators.

[JSE]

Strange that they would continue to construct new stores while they closed more than 200 locations back in November. Nice of them to provide a brand spanking new location for a liquidation sale, given that all of those brand new store fixtures and inventory now belong to the liquidators.

Makes no sense at all. As far as I know, it's been sitting there as is for a couple of weeks now. No telling how long it has been sitting there fully stocked.

[GMichael]

We know that you are stalking it for a midnight run.

[Rich-n-Texas]

Hook me up Cartman!!!

[pixelthis]

Roger dodger...

.

Are you gonna shoot yer speakers?

NO, just the guy taking them out the window.
Cracks re atarting to appear in the infrastructure, what with la la land going tits up and all.
In normal circumstances I can get by without a weapon just fine.
But in a general breakdown of public order (which is just a matter of WHEN, not IF)...

[pixelthis]

Hmmm... my old receiver didn't have phono inputs, but my 3800 does.

they are rapidly disapearing, even on higher end gear.
I can see that a decent phono preamp can be expensive, but a lower line one at least would be nice for those of us that still spin vinyl

So why was 3D HDTV at the top of your list in your sad "CES tidbits" thread?

Just quoting what the talking head said, mainly that everybody was talking about 3D
at CES.
Dont care what anybody says, I have witnessed all of the 3D crashes and burns
over the last four decades, and have seen NOTHING that will elevate it above
"gimmick" status.
The biggest advance was polarized glasses, and those give you a king hell headach after a few minutes.
And at least I TRIED to post something of at least a little value.
LETS SEE HOW GOOD you could do!

[JSE]

We know that you are stalking it for a midnight run.

Hook me up Cartman!!!

.........................

[pixelthis]

Makes no sense at all. As far as I know, it's been sitting there as is for a couple of weeks now. No telling how long it has been sitting there fully stocked.

They didnt build it, some real estate developer did.
We just had a huge developement open, its been very successfull, but teh biggest store is a Circuit CITY, right in the middle of it(Best Buy backed out)
Chains rarely build any store, they rent from a developer if they can.
A real time bomb in this country is commercial real estate, its going to be the next to go.
And if you think the private real estate market was a mess, YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET.

[JSE]

They didnt build it, some real estate developer did.
We just had a huge developement open, its been very successfull, but teh biggest store is a Circuit CITY, right in the middle of it(Best Buy backed out)
Chains rarely build any store, they rent from a developer if they can.
A real time bomb in this country is commercial real estate, its going to be the next to go.
And if you think the private real estate market was a mess, YOU AINT SEEN NOTHING YET.

It's possible Circuit City did not flip for the cost for the actual structure but they still had to pay for the buildout (interior),all the product, man power, insurance costs, etc.

Again, makes no sense.

[pixelthis]

It's possible Circuit City did not flip for the cost for the actual structure but they still had to pay for the buildout (interior),all the product, man power, insurance costs, etc.

Again, makes no sense.

COMPANIES have business plans that are religiously adherred to, sometimes extending for years.
If they had not gone through with their plans word would have gotten out,
and their stock would have acheived toilet paper status even faster than it actually did.
In other words it WOULD have been over, but by pretending business as usual they bought time.
Might seem like rearanging deck chairs on the titanic to you, but every week you keep things going is another week you get a paycheck.

You also buy time to dump your stock in a manner apropriate to the SEC so that your butt doedsnt wind up in jail.

[02audionoob]

they are rapidly disapearing, even on higher end gear.
I can see that a decent phono preamp can be expensive, but a lower line one at least would be nice for those of us that still spin vinyl

I wouldn't mind providing the phono preamp if they'd just leave me that line level input to attach it to (instead of having to use the AUX input). I've got 7 sources on my Adcom GFP-565 preamp. If I upgrade, I might have to live with 4.

[Woochifer]

It's possible Circuit City did not flip for the cost for the actual structure but they still had to pay for the buildout (interior),all the product, man power, insurance costs, etc.

Again, makes no sense.

If CC was supposed to anchor the shopping center, they likely had lots of options, including land leases or the developer sells them the land outright in order to secure the financing for other portions of the development (much easier to get financing if an anchor tenant is already on board). For a new shopping center development, the anchor tenants are often partners with the developer.

I know that once things get moving along, you can't really stop it and that might be the case here. CC probably had these plans and contracts in motion, even before they went through their first round of store closures. It's just strange that they would continue to stock and fit the building interior while other CC locations in the market were getting liquidated.

Close to my house, Mervyns department store relocated to a brand new building across the street from their old one, and the chain declared bankruptcy only a month later. There too, you had a brand new building that opened just in time to host a liquidation sale. But, at least that store opened for business!

[JSE]

If CC was supposed to anchor the shopping center, they likely had lots of options, including land leases or the developer sells them the land outright in order to secure the financing for other portions of the development (much easier to get financing if an anchor tenant is already on board). For a new shopping center development, the anchor tenants are often partners with the developer.

I know that once things get moving along, you can't really stop it and that might be the case here. CC probably had these plans and contracts in motion, even before they went through their first round of store closures. It's just strange that they would continue to stock and fit the building interior while other CC locations in the market were getting liquidated.

Close to my house, Mervyns department store relocated to a brand new building across the street from their old one, and the chain declared bankruptcy only a month later. There too, you had a brand new building that opened just in time to host a liquidation sale. But, at least that store opened for business!

The CC is/was going to be third largest store in the shopping center. There is already a huge HEB Market Center (grocery store) open and an Academy Sporting Goods store which will open soon. I can see how things can't really be stopped once everything is put in motion but to outfit and stock the store? That's just plain stupid. I need to go by there again this weekend and see if they have started taking out the stock. I can't see them leaving it there for long and I don't think they would open the store just to liquidate everything. Seems like it would be cheaper to just move the stock to existing closing stores. There are two within 10 miles.

[Mr Peabody]

I didn't want to start yet another Circuit City thread so here's the latest.

Circuit City is getting a BBB warning in my area because they are actually selling TV's and other big ticket items for more than what they were originally and putting a 20% discount tag on them. The news story said Circuit City going out of business is actually causing better sales in competitive stores. I went in CC Saturday before seeing this story tonight and saw this for myself. I went in looking for a bargain and found things that were supposed to be discounted at a higher price than seen online or other stores. They said a liquidation company bought CC's inventory and the right to sell it off for X amount of dollars and gave the value of the inventory. If the company sold the inventory at a discount they wouldn't make any money. They may not any way once every one finds out what's going on.

[Feanor]

...

Circuit City is getting a BBB warning in my area because they are actually selling TV's and other big ticket items for more than what they were originally and putting a 20% discount tag on them....

Caveat emptor

[Groundbeef]

The problem is that CC isn't selling anything anymore. All of their inventory has been sold. It's now a liquidator doing the selling.

They need to take down the old price tags though. That is a problem.

[squeegy200]

No wonder they are going out of business. They just built a gigantic store a few miles from my house in a new shopping center. They started back in October. The thing is huge! I'm guessing a minimum of several million in construction costs alone. The problem is, it still has never opened! Probably never will now. There have been people working there filling it with inventory for the last month so I peaked through a rip in the brown paper on the windows and it looked like it's ready to open. Fully stocked and just sitting there. The shelves are full, lights are on, but no workers. Kindof eary?

There is a store near my house which moved into the now defunct CompUSA Store Front in Arcadia CA. They opened there doors with a Grand Opening a couple weeks before Christmas and soon afterwards hung a "Going Out of Business" banner across the front of the newly hung sign. The paint has barely dried on their newly paved parking lot.

[Mr Peabody]

Caveat emptor

Don't be using that Canadian slang on here, if your cubbards empty, just say so.

[pixelthis]

I didn't want to start yet another Circuit City thread so here's the latest.

Circuit City is getting a BBB warning in my area because they are actually selling TV's and other big ticket items for more than what they were originally and putting a 20% discount tag on them. The news story said Circuit City going out of business is actually causing better sales in competitive stores. I went in CC Saturday before seeing this story tonight and saw this for myself. I went in looking for a bargain and found things that were supposed to be discounted at a higher price than seen online or other stores. They said a liquidation company bought CC's inventory and the right to sell it off for X amount of dollars and gave the value of the inventory. If the company sold the inventory at a discount they wouldn't make any money. They may not any way once every one finds out what's going on.

THIS "LIQUIDATION" company was quite upfront about what they do as a general rule.
First they move in MORE stuff, and you might have noticed some items not in the Circuit
"program".
Then they mark everything UP, and then put a 30% off tag on everything.
Granddaddy did the same thing when business was slow, put everything on the sidewalk and double the price, they usually had to get more stuff because they would run out.
AND I know THAT YOU KNOW what "caveat emptor" really means dr pee pee.
You may be one of the "blonds" on this site but you're not that blond.

[Mr Peabody]

I don't think they were "up front", if they announced "come on in, we just jacked up prices so we can allow a mark down and sell at original price while claiming we gave a discount", I don't think that would attract much interest. Most savvy consumers will notice what happened when they see the prices but others may be duped that don't normaaly shop online or keep there eye on the sales trends. I think most people do comparison shopping these days but you know about the slippery slope, if one turns a blind eye to the liquidators false advertising then what's next.

[pixelthis]

I don't think they were "up front", if they announced "come on in, we just jacked up prices so we can allow a mark down and sell at original price while claiming we gave a discount", I don't think that would attract much interest. Most savvy consumers will notice what happened when they see the prices but others may be duped that don't normaaly shop online or keep there eye on the sales trends. I think most people do comparison shopping these days but you know about the slippery slope, if one turns a blind eye to the liquidators false advertising then what's next.

well, thats what I read in the business section of the news.
They outlined their whole strategy, which is basically what I said, verbatim.
They were quite up front about it, actually.