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The Last Will and Testament of Circuit City
Harry writes "Sunday is the final day of business for Circuit City, the once-dominant national consumer electronics chain done in by the rise of Best Buy, the crummy economy, and multiple failings of its own. I paid a final visit of respect to my local store, and found that they'd gotten rid of just about all the unopened electronics products, and were therefore selling off stuff like broken computers and the toilet-paper dispenser from the restroom. Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene." NPR has a segment on the end of the Circuit City era as well.
"Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene"
Newbie.
Circuit City cut their own throat in a series of dreadful missteps(culminating in their brilliant "Hey, let's sack all the halfway competent salespeople and attempt to hire them back at downright insulting newb wages" scheme), their demise is well deserved. Even in death, their prices are high and their service lousy. Why is their death sad?
I remember in the early nineties when the Circuit City car audio installation department employed all those otherwise out of work recent EE grads. Good times.
Where do EE majors work now? The wife is looking for work.
Years ago, when I first moved to California, I had never seen a Circuit City, only Best Buys (and was suitably appalled by BB and business practices, they tried a bait and switch on me once).
I found the Circuit Citys I saw to be clean, maintained, decent prices, friendly employees. But then, a few years ago, I noticed a reversal taking place - the CCs near me had become, for lack of a better word, 'ghetto' - unfriendly employees, broken equipment on display, and lack of product - while the Best Buys had cleaned up and trained their employees. I switched back to BB, occasionally walking into CCs, and finding them just getting worse and worse.
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I call dibs on the lady that worked in printers.
"Whether or not you were ever a fan, it was a sad scene"
Hey, that reminds me of something...
I just heard some sad news on talk radio - electronics retailer Circuit City was found dead in its Stripmall, Illinois home this morning. There weren't any more details. I'm sure everyone in the Slashdot community will miss him - even if you didn't enjoy his work, there's no denying its contributions to mass market electronics. Truly an American icon.
here in washington they couldnt even go out of business right!! The prices at 40% off were either the same as best buy or more!!
and were therefore selling off stuff like broken computers and the toilet-paper dispenser from the restroom
At the checkout:
"You know, I've got a couple of these toilet paper dispensers, and they always seem to jam at the most inopportune times. Could I interest you in purchasing our exclusive 5-year extended warranty protection plan for only $179 more? It would really give you more peace of mind in the bathroom."
I quickly had written it off my list of places to go when it was in business and hadn't been there in years. When they were shutting down, I figured I'd go and check to see what kind of deals were available. Answer? None that I could find. Most things were no better than retail, I could go to Best Buy and get the same price. Oh sure they were "marked down"... but they'd been marked up first. There were a few things I saw that were lower than you might see in most brick and mortar stores, but not by much and not any lower than you'd find online.
I never understood why they thought that their high prices were sustainable. I mean I understand that retail stores charge more than online. No problem, you are paying for the convenience. However they charged more than other retail stores. Well guess what? I can drive to Best Buy just as easy.
Also you can justify higher prices with better service/experience. Some high end AV shops are like that. The prices are high, even when you consider the gear they sell (which is already very high priced) but the service is top notch. You can spend hours milling around, trying out things. They have knowledgeable people who will answer your questions and such. Thus you are willing to pay more.
Well CC didn't have that, at least not the ones I'd tried. Their sales people didn't know shit and were rather pushy.
Ok so if you aren't going for the service, and aren't going for the price, why go? Well the answer to that question for me and apparently many others was "you don't." Thus they are out of business.
I feel bad for their employees as this is not a good time to be looking for a job at all, and probably doubly bad looking for a retail job, but I do not feel bad for Circuit City. They were a crap business, and that's the whole idea in a capitalist market: You run a crap business, you fail and are replaced by someone better. Best Buy is by no means perfect, but they are better than CC.
Circuit City was dead to me when they lauched their DIVX plan back in the late 90's between that and their jacked up warranty policy (back then if you returned an item that you had purchased an extended warranty for, they pocketed the warranty fees) I had vowed never to step foot in one again. I managed to steer free from CC until a few months ago when I went by the local one to pick over the corpse during its going out of business sale.
I really think their biggest problem is the whole time they thought they were competing with Best Buy, but they were really competing with Target, Walmart, and online retailers like Newegg, Buy.com, and TigerDirect. Best Buy should try to learn from their demise.
I Heart Sorting Networks
Even under liquidation they were selling their stuff for maybe 10% off. I can't tell you how many I watched walking out and telling each other "This is why they're going out of business..."
"I am writing this message in representation of the employees of Circuit City here in Richmond who are having to deal with inexcusable conditions being brought on by customers with retribution. Walk into any Circuit City store on any given day and you will find a handful of employees and a sea of customers. The fact that people have flocked to our stores en masse on a daily basis, creating Black-Friday style crowds, has been insulting to our employees and our business alike.
Where was this support when we needed it? Liquidation, for us, has brought great havoc on a series of levels. I've been working for the company for almost two years, and I have never seen anything worse than I have seen over the past month. Customers have gotten enraged over the fact that our discounts aren't good enough for them."
While I only shopped there if I wanted something *now*, I did go in once the closures were announced and you could see people loading up on stuff just because it was some % off. I never saw anything that I couldn't get a similar deal online at the time (and also came with warranty) so I couldn't understand the why people descended on the store en masse. The only explanation I can think of is a feeding frenzy brought on by greed. So from that perspective I can understand where the letters author was coming from
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
It was a sad day when Enron closed its doors after making horrible management decisions that cost their employees, customers, and the general public billions. But curiously enough, nobody ever blames management. "The market is bad." Yes, the big bad evil market -- tell me, even in a recession or depression, does the market for electronics suddenly disappear? No. It might shrink, but a business that's properly built will shrink with it, not simply die off. A corporate mass-extinction like this has only one cause: Bad management. Period.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
What happened to their boneheaded execs that cut their own throat? Took their golden parachutes and went screwing other companies?
ELOI, ELOI, LAMA SABACHTHANI!?
I never put much stock into the psychological games retailers play to get you to buy products until I went into a Circuit City. Whoever they got to design their stores obviously didn't understand what makes people feel at ease and happy. Every time I stepped into a CC, I couldn't wait to get the hell out. Something about the layout, the ceiling, and/or the lighting just made me feel uncomfortable. Then on course, you had the staff. When you wanted help, they were no where around. When you wanted to be left alone, they came in droves.
I admit their online->in store pickup functioned much smoother than Best Buy's.
Results for circuitcity.com
Found 12 sites
Site Site Report First seen Netblock OS
1. www.circuitcity.com Site Report march 1996 adsl endpoints nat conections only linux
2. entertainment.circuitcity.com Site Report june 2004 alliance entertainment corp. f5 big-ip
3. email.circuitcity.com Site Report june 2006 epsilon interactive f5 big-ip
4. investor.circuitcity.com Site Report november 2002 nasdaq stock market windows server 2003
5. circuitcity.com Site Report january 1998 akamai technologies linux
6. weeklyad.circuitcity.com Site Report november 2003 westwood vista shopping center linux
7. newsroom.circuitcity.com Site Report may 2004 nasdaq stock market unknown
8. media.circuitcity.com Site Report august 2008 trueffect, inc. linux
9. ssl.circuitcity.com Site Report august 2004 akamai technologies linux
10. answers.circuitcity.com Site Report january 2009 adsl endpoints nat conections only linux
11. internalforum.circuitcity.com Site Report september 2007 ibm f5 big-ip
12. business.circuitcity.com Site Report december 2004 ibm unknown
I suspect 4, 6, 7, 8, 10 and 12 will be dead soon, and wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall for 11 :-)
It is sad for so many employees there. It is certainly easy for us to sit here and comment on how crap their knowledge was, blah, blah, blah. But in reality, most of the people that worked there were not bad people. They were in a bad business, though. Their company did not support them through adequate training, etc. Couple this with declining margins, and the bottom falling out of several of their key products (PCs, TVs, etc) and they didn't really stand a chance. So all of the points here are valid, but I really feel for some of those folks that showed up, and worked to the best of their abilities. This is a shitty time to be looking for a new job.
There's the time I was pricing DVD drives, and got thrown out of the store because I dared to -write down- prices.
And the time we bought a 'open box return' DLT TV, and the bulb blew out a couple weeks later. The installer pointed out there was about 150 hours on the bulb, a lot more than you'd expect for an 'open box', but consistent with this as a demo/floor model.
My neighbor had a disastrous experience with their installation service, he ended up having to redo it all.
And of course, that's before their dumb-assed management failures. Unfortunately, I'm sure the -corporate officers- won't suffer (except in the loss of future rip-off income...)
So Good Riddance, Circuit City! You sucked!
I like microcars
1) customers do not owe businesses "support", If a business treats their customers with courtesy, good service, and respect for their intelligence they will earn customer loyalty even in bad times.
2) Customers tend to get outraged when they hear about 40% off sales and then go in and see that the 40% off item was marked higher than it had been the week before the sale started. Its not a matter of "didnt get the discount they wanted" its a matter of being suckered into a store and having their time wasted.
3) Their customers didnt kill their store, their bosses did. They shouldnt blame their customers for simply looking for an honest bargain.
My whole state of Maryland only has one Microcenter and it's miles from me. Microcenter seems to have very conservative growth plans. I'm hoping this will interest them in moving into the void left by Circuit City, MC is way better than BestBuy or Circuit City.
First a Mitsubishi from their one brand store as it was really the only game in town. Next from Sears as they had a decent price and I was there after visiting Best Buy and not deciding. 2 days ago after visiting WalMart where they were out of every one of a size and brand I'd consider, was it Costco and drove home with it. Their selection was medium, price good, condition of box (and product on installation) perfect, sales pressure/help not needed.
Interesting article in Business Week on liquidators and how they operate. Don't expect bargains until the last days when there is darn near nothing anyone wants left. It wasn't Circuit City people selling in those last days, it was the liquidator setting the prices and hiring the existing staff.
bought a TV there several years ago. good knowledgeable salesman, steered me away from an idiot mistake i was trying to make, matched my price range and excellent service. Went back several times and paid a higher price than on-line or what it would have cost for BB. when they sacked him and the rest of the competent salesmen, i never went back. I would rather pay 10% more and get excellent service, and 20% more for excellent service and convenience.
Having an extensive memory like I do and also having lived in Richmond many years ago and then most recently; I feel I have a pretty damn good over view of the whole fiasco. The problem was with management. The problem was with management every single step of the way.
When I was a teenager, Circuit City was THE place to buy anything electronic. Why? The salespeople worked on commission so it was in their best interests to know what they were talking about. You could stand and talk with them for however long it took and the lions' share of them knew what they were talking about in every aspect of what you were considering buying. The service was so good that people used to refer other people to the salesman that had helped them by name.
I can remember CC winning design awards for stereo eq that came out on occassion as well as many other things. At the same time, their return policy was bar none, the best you could get anywhere. So what happened?
First, management decided they wanted a larger chunk of their employees pay. To that end, they cut all the salespeople and offered them entry level wages on a per hour basis. Almost immediately, the good sales people left. They moved on to greener pastures. Instead of walking in and talking to someone who knew what they were talking about, you got a teenager who was more concerned with who he or she was going out with on Friday night. Not that there is anything wrong with teenagers, I used to be one too. But, a teenager making minimum wage is never going to be able to compete with someone who lives and breathes whatever the product is that they are selling.
Next came the elimination of the large appliances. Who is honestly going to buy a washer and dryer from a 16 year old kid? You see, when people realized it was kids in there, the high dollar purchases ended. It ceased being THE store and became a store...like so many others. As many of the commissioned sales people left, many of the management also left. What they were left with was a company with salespeople who did not understand what they were selling along with a management team whose understanding of technology was "It's the next big thing!"
In a mad dash to recoup the losses generated by idiot management, they turned to many deals that were ill advised at best. The most glaring of these was the DIVX support. They tied almost all of their fortune to Toshiba and in turn provided the buffer zone financially if the whole thing fell apart. As we all know...Americans like to own their media (we can argue about that later).
When DIVX collapsed as everyone who knew anything about formats knew it was going to, CC took the brunt of it. Then as we all know, the dot com boom blew out and that was it. One of my favorite incidences that occurred was about 10 years or so ago, you found out you had been laid off on Monday mornings by a sign on your desk. If your stuff was in a box and there was Kleenex next to it on your desk and a security guard in your department wandering around, you were laid off. You can only do that so many times to employees in your headquarter town before you hit a point where noll amount of advertising is going to save your company from bad press.
But, time had moved on and Best Buy had shown up on the sidleines and was edging their way in. BB opened stores that were clean and bright and made their fortune off of friendly helpful people who knew what they were doing. As CC began to circle the drain, more stores closed, more layoffs took place, items got cheaper and their price went up. Where at one time in CC you could walk in and buy just about anything for a great price and have your neighbors over and have them oohh and ahh for the next three days; now, it was a shady looking place where you kind of expected someone to offer you 'grey market' items in a dark corner.
They never dropped their prices after they stopped paying their commissioned salespeople. In many ways, CC was THE MOST EXPENSIVE place to buy something. Yes, you
Circuit City won't be mourned, except that it's nice to have an alternative everyonce in a while when you need to have something, and it's out of stock at Best Buy. Yes, I get the majority of my media and tech stuff online, but CC didn't start that way, they started as an appliance vendor. So did Best Buy, and there's a nice bright corner of BestBuy that nobody notices that has fridges, stoves, microwaves and that kind of crap you only buy once every ten years. So what did CC do wrong? 1) Crappy selection: Once upon a time, I liked CC's CD selection better than Best Buy: it was large, well organized, and deep. More recently, they've got squat for selection, the same lousy prices as every other retailer, and when they've got big sales, everything's just basically in a pile, no alphabetizing to speak of beyond the first initial, if you're lucky. 2) Crappy service: Buying a camera or a laptop (I helped an idiot relative buy one of each, even though I told her the prices could be beaten online), requires the attention of a sales droid, and printing out about eight yards of paper, none of which are a receipt. 3)Computers, HD-TV, Blu-Ray are a commodity: if you can get them in WalMart, they're not a specialty item. Don't sell them like they are. but mainly 4) Failed to adapt: Their stores continued, even after recent revamps, to look dark and scary, the way TV stores always used to look in the 70's. Who wants to go in there? The color red may have been a failure too: it means warning, danger, stay away (then again, BestBuy's black on yellow is the classic warning color combo, our eyes see that contrast better than anything else). I seldom went into a Circuit City. The ones nearest to me were closed long ago (one's an Off Track Betting parlor, another became a Bed Bath and Beyond). They won't be missed.
Design for Use, not Construction!
Pretty much you are left out in the cold.
There is way better arguments for using cash than tin-foil-hat paranoia though:
1) Banks fucking suck. They don't always post your CC transactions right away so they can lie about your true balance and fuck you over with overdrafts and NSF's.
2) It is cheaper for the merchant. Cash = no merchant fees.
3) You can tip waiters and know they have the option of pocketing the cash instead of reporting it.
4) That is about all I can think of.
4.1) Oh yeah, the NBA, CIA, and Odwalla is spying on you when you use credit/debit cards. Only Russians and Odwalla spy on your cash transactions.
That said:
1) Pay in cash, and you can't reverse the charge if the seller fucks you over. You can sue them, yeah, but that is more expensive and you might not win. CC's let you chargeback.
2) Loose your wallet, loose your cash. Loose your wallet, deactivate your credit card.
3) You can import your bank statements (after everything settles down and posts correctly) into your favorite financial app and account for your spending.
4) The NBA and the NSA have joined forces to provide you with personalized mind control based on your credit card transactions. This is a good thing because all hail Uncle Sam.
Circuit City is text book example of what attempting to become very rich very quickly almost always results in. It is a perfect analog of the national and world economy. The blue print for demise Circuit City followed:
Action: Remove staff with knowledge and ability and start paying less to less capable people.
Reason: Keep immediate profits high.
Outcome: Reduced sales due to less customer service.
Action: Leave prices high.
Reason: Keep immediate profits high.
Outcome: Failing to see that the consumer electronics market is shifting to a Walmart model (aggressive pricing, low profit, high volume) sales go down.
Action: Eliminate deep discounts on open box, out of production, or discontinued merchandise.
Reason: Keep immediate profits high.
Outcome: Reduced repeat and casual traffic resulting in reduced sales.
This is what happens when any business runs itself based on the principle of "Keep immediate profits high" rather than "Keep customers coming back".
Gordon Gecko was wrong - greed is bad.
Yeah, I went in there yesterday for the sale. Got a pretty sweet deal on a Divx player. Anyone know how long the "waiting for server" screen takes?
Over the years I've bought a couple of laptops at Circuit City, mostly because I found them at a good discount. Service was either non-existent or worse: it took them 15 minutes to fetch from their stockroom what I asked for, and then it was up to me to notice that the model number was the wrong one. They didn't know what they were selling.
It was also downright insulting when they checked at the exit all bag contents against the sales slip, radiating suspicion that their customers were thieves. Fry's Electronics has an exit check too, but much more low-key
These days I tend to visit B&M stores for a hands-on experience and then order what I choose online. I would accept paying a $50 markup for the convenience of having a $1000 laptop in my hands on the spot, but B&Ms seem to want more than that. It doesn't fly.
I think there are several poor business decisions that the company made in the past 10 years or so that can explain why they failed. Starting with their venture into the DIVX fiasco (hint: if your "partner" in a business venture is a law firm, it's probably one to avoid). They probably could have recovered after they finally killed DIVX, if it wasn't for also deciding to get out of the major appliances business. Talk about pure stupidity there -- you see, most major appliances customers are older people, homeowners, with money, and while they're buying that refrigerator or dishwasher today, in six months, they'll probably be looking for a new wide screen television or laptop. Getting rid of appliances just eliminated a huge segment of the market, and lots of sales!
Mistake #3 was just simply not figuring out your basic store structure. After I left the company, every time I walked into the store, I swear to God, they had a new format and arrangement! I could never find anything! If you can't figure out something as simple as this, you're doomed. Going along with this, Firedog was simply at least three years too late in responding to the Geek Squad -- Best Buy won that one easily.
The final nail in the coffin (and I'm sure this has already been stated in this thread somewhere, but I'll put it here just for my own completeness) is firing all of their experienced salespeople and replacing them with non-commissioned, inexperienced, Wal-Mart-esque, clerks. I do understand that ultimately, they had to ditch the commissioned model, simply because of the change in the marketplace. But they went about it totally wrong -- a better solution would be to take advantage of the high turnover rate in retail as it is, and just not hire new commissioned salespeople, and grandfather the experienced ones, who can then be a huge resource to the newer salespeople in teaching them the ropes.
So, it's sad to see them go, but not surprising based on their business decisions of the past 10 years. I did learn a lot from working there back in the 90s, especially regarding computers, installations, and technology in general, so I thank them for that. In the meantime, I guess I'll get my electronics from Newegg or TigerDirect. At least until some new entrepreneur decides to open up a Buy More,... ;-)
I worked in there on weekends for a third party company "selling" crap software. I put selling in quotations because in reality this meant jacking off for four hours. I came in, punched in via telephone, went to Panera Bread, ate breakfast, came back, stood around for an hour or so, went out to lunch, came back and stood around for a while. When I wasn't screwing around in the break room or out eating, I was screwing around with CC employees, joking around with them, making fun of dumb customers. Making fun of a customer that used the term "Gigapixel" stands out. The worst part of it all was that I got paid like twice the minimum wage for doing this. I heard other employees talk about how execs, store managers, assistant store managers, and district managers made crap loads of money also. Also factor in that instead of having commissioned sales people, it was like reversed. People that didn't have high sales would get less and less hours. The top sales person at the one store I visited didn't know crap about computers. Another employee lashed out at me for trying to help him explain something that he didn't fully understand. So yeah, it was a group of high school, right out of high school kids. I had fun, but I feel bad for the people that really depended on those jobs.
Banks notoriously like to post your transactions NOT in the order in which you make them, but in the order the merchant reports them. ...
So if you've got a balance of $1,000 on close-of-business Friday, make $900 worth of purchases over the weekend, you should have a balance of $100.
First thing Monday, you know you've got a large bill coming due on Wednesday, so you make a $500 deposit, thus bringing your balance to $600.
You make the payment Wednesday, taking your balance down to $50, and your Cheque Register (& spreadsheet) show your balance as $50.
Except the Bank posted them in some twisted order that leaves you with $200 worth of NSF fees because you supposedly left your account overdrawn.
And there isn't a damned thing you can do about it because they say "We can't control when the Merchants post your transactions."
Yeah, except my Cheque Register & spreadsheet show all my transactions AND the balances, and MY numbers don't match YOUR numbers.
Guess who loses - it sure as hell isn't the bank because YOU get to pony-up the NSF fees.
Changing banks won't help, they all do it.
So, please, honestly, explain to me how the spreadsheet is supposed to help?
It hasn't so far, and I'm so anal-retentive when it comes to my money, it pisses me off that I can double-check my math with a calculator & come up with the same answers every time, but the bank seems to be pulling numbers out of its ass
=(
Only in America would anyone consider mourning the closing of a retail store.
Fucking pathetic really...
I remember applying for a job at Circuit City while attending college for computer science.
The application essentially boiled down to "Would you lie to make a sale to the customer. And would you hard sale push the service plans."
As I endeavor to lead an honest life, most of my answers to their veiled questions were no. But I don't need to. I used to wander the aisles of CompUSA and Circuit City and sell goods for them. Because I was pretty much always more knowledgeable than the salespeople.
But I believe the above philosophy is in part why Circuit City went under. When you build a foundation on lies, you're not going to have good customer loyalty in the long run. And the only thing you're going to have is price-stalkers.
Right after college, desperate for a job, I interviewed with Circuit City.
I had to go to the main place down near the city instead of out in Henrico.
First thing I notice is there are a bunch of people who look like a bunch of junkies hanging out in fron of the door.
I walk past that into the reception area. After a brief wait, a guy and a girl who I think were younger than me at the time, took me into an office for the interview.
As soon as I sat down they started reading questions from their clipboard.
These questions weren't the kind that would see if you knew anything about their products or could otherwise do your jobs. They were all about "If you saw one of your coworkers using illegal drugs in their home, what would you do?" With few exceptions they were all about drug use.
The last question was, do you have any questions for us? My answer was "Yes I do. Since y'all seem extremely interested in drug use, does Circuit City have a lot of employees with a drug problem? I certainly don't want to work in such an environment."
They gave me some BS answer about weeding out that kind of employee.
I walked out the door knowing I would not accept a job with them no matter what.
Of course they didn't call me either so I guess I didn't give them the answers they wanted.