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Best Buy Kills Off Future Shop
Lirodon writes: Future Shop, a Canadian electronics chain that was bought by Best Buy in 2001, but continued to operate in parallel with the newly-opened Canadian locations of the U.S. retailer, is no more. Today, the company abruptly announced the closure of the Future Shop chain, and the permanent closure of 66 of its remaining 131 locations. The remaining 65 Future Shop locations (specifically, those that weren't within driving, or even walking distance of a Best Buy to begin with) will be converted to Best Buy stores over the next few days.
This is just the latest step in Best Buy's efforts to downsize its Canadian operations and focus on online retail. The new, downsized chain will consist of 136 Best Buy stores (and 56 of the small Best Buy Mobile stores) in Canada. Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this.
This is just the latest step in Best Buy's efforts to downsize its Canadian operations and focus on online retail. The new, downsized chain will consist of 136 Best Buy stores (and 56 of the small Best Buy Mobile stores) in Canada. Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this.
Big retail chains are doomed. They can't compete on price with online stores, and they can't compete on service with local stores who don't have to send most of their profits to the stock market. This has little or nothing to do with Harper, unless you believe a more left-wing government would have nationalized Future Shop to keep it open.
Futureshop and BestBuy were literally on the same street, less than half a klick from eachother in my town. I never went to BestBuy because the one time I was there, the dumb blonde behind the counter berated me for buying the kind of keyboard I wanted.
Anyways, since Futureshop is closed now, I went to WorstBuy to see if I could get a 7200 rpm 2.5" HD, or an SSD of any kind. No SSD's anywhere, only 2 2.5" HD's, both 5400rpm. Crap... Then I passed by the cables because I needed a couple short ethernet cables. $25 for a 4' ethernet cable? Are you fucking shitting me? And these guys are complaining they're losing business.
Maybe if you fuckheads had shit people actually wanted to buy, at reasonable prices, they would buy it.
Actually no. I just hate it when U.S. companies have to barge into Canada and throw perfectly good brands in the Recycle Bin like that. Our country is too Americanized. But I too am shocked that they allowed this redundancy to last so long, plus how abrupt it was.
I kind of liked Futureshop. They usually had what I wanted and the service wasn't too bad. Kind of fun wandering around when you're bored too.
A great band (The Sycamores of Halifax), which broke up years ago, even wrote a song about having nothing to do and going to Futureshop. Since The Sycamores are basically forgotten by the internet, here's the song, 'Future Shop Monday':
http://picosong.com/V2r8/
http://picosong.com/download/V2r8/
Really? Nothing that's distinctly Canadian? Did you see the closing ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics? My wife and I watched both the Canadian and American coverage. The announcer on the Canadian coverage was happily chatting away about the festivities, whereas the American announcer was pretty much speechless, because what he was seeing was so not American.
We're a hell of a lot friendlier and more polite than Americans, in general. Not that there aren't exceptions; there certainly are. But on the whole, it's true. I've traveled a fair amount through Canada, various parts of the US, and some in Europe. I've never felt uncomfortable or out of place, except in the US. Now, that was mostly in the north east, as when I went through Tennessee, people were almost as friendly as Canadians. Americans just seem to be more blunt and "in your face" than pretty much anybody else I've encountered in my travels.
Besides: we have Red Green.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......