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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.
"stealing business?"
Really?
I want to buy certain items locally - like the Roccat Ryos MK Pro with blue switches, the ROG Swift monitor, and stuff like that. Best Buy doesn't stock them and I've got Amazon Prime, so why would I order from Worst Buy and wait 3-5 days for an item when I can get it next day for $3.99 shipping? (as far as why Best Buy doesn't stock the ROG Swift when they are among a very small handful of authorized retailers for that model, I have no idea.) I could drive 70 miles to Micro Center down in MA, but then I'd also have to pay sales tax. So, when I buy that monitor, I'm going to get it from Amazon.
Amazon sells MANY things brick-and-mortars don't any more. Want to find a good precision screwdriver set? I can't find a good set at Sears any more, nor Home Depot, nor Lowes, or smaller hardware stores, nor at Best Buy, or even harbor Freight. Sooo, where do I turn? Amazon.
Ass Kickin' ghost pepper hot sauce - I cannot find it anywhere local. So, where do I order that from? Amazon. Amazon stocks darn near everything you can imagine.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
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.
The real surprise is why it took so long? 14 years is a heck of a long time to be running large redundant stores. From the parking lot of my local Future Shop, you could literally see the Best Buy store, and neither store was ever busy enough to really justify having two so close together, and I've heard that some were so close as to share a parking lot. It might be different if there were significant differences in the product lines they carried, but as it is it never really made much sense.
Log in or piss off.
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.
Almost a million dollars (CDN) for any decent-sized house that isn't a dump.
You must have only looked in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Anything upwards of about $600,000 in the London area gets you an absolute mansion.
As an example: 4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms, a huge lot, inground pool, 2 car garage, tons of landscaping, fountains, etc, for $715,000.
http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?PropertyId=15394802
If that place qualifies as either a dump, or too small, then you have no right to bitch about the price of property, because you must pretty much be a 1%er.
Take a look at the $700,000 - $800,000 range:
http://www.realtor.ca/Map.aspx#CultureId=1&ApplicationId=1&RecordsPerPage=9&MaximumResults=9&PropertyTypeId=300&TransactionTypeId=2&SortOrder=A&SortBy=1&LongitudeMin=-81.48207731193361&LongitudeMax=-81.01035184806642&LatitudeMin=42.886606758167304&LatitudeMax=43.087019589728655&PriceMin=700000&PriceMax=800000&BedRange=0-0&BathRange=0-0&ParkingSpaceRange=0-0&viewState=m&Longitude=-81.24621458&Latitude=42.98689485&ZoomLevel=11&CurrentPage=1
There are plenty of huge houses, 3 car garages, etc, in there.
If you want to look at the more realistic for most people range of $300,000 to $400,000:
http://www.realtor.ca/Map.aspx#CultureId=1&ApplicationId=1&RecordsPerPage=9&MaximumResults=9&PropertyTypeId=300&TransactionTypeId=2&SortOrder=A&SortBy=1&LongitudeMin=-81.48207731193361&LongitudeMax=-81.01035184806642&LatitudeMin=42.886606758167304&LatitudeMax=43.087019589728655&PriceMin=300000&PriceMax=425000&BedRange=0-0&BathRange=0-0&ParkingSpaceRange=0-0&viewState=m&Longitude=-81.24621458&Latitude=42.98689485&ZoomLevel=11&CurrentPage=1
You'll still find plenty of very nice houses in there, too.
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
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......
First of all, this is the norm among industrialized economies. Perhaps Norway is different. I haven't checked since the fracking boom.
Second, the thriving middle class was a fairly short lived affair, centered around three decades from 1950–1980. Most affluent societies have now returned to pre-1930s levels of economic inequality. Historically, an affluent middle class is the exception and not the norm.
I had a college roommate whose brawny younger brother dropped out of high school with few skills and somehow got a job with the CAW at a starting wage north of $70,000 per year, back in the early 1980s. He soon had a wife and children, a driveway filled with expensive motor toys, and cash-flow problems.
He was almost certainly employed at a factory making automotive products that discerning consumers—those of us lacking misty-eyed Big Three loyalty—did not wish to purchase.
Meanwhile, high school drop-outs trying to scrape by on non-union wages weren't necessarily doing much better than those same people today, a major difference being that the majority of those fantasy union jobs have now gone away.
Someone needs to get in a time travel booth to go back to the early 1970s to inform the CAW management group that no matter what course of action they chose, their business model (high union wages for semi-skilled labour) could not survive selling shit product. Marketing the hell out shit product was a short-term solution at best (Future Shop—ultimately—not excepted).
As much as the Reagan and Thatcher plutocrats initiated a self-serving destruction of the middle class, the middle class itself was hardly blameless.
Now it's time for the plutocrats to determine whether they can recognize how they are painting themselves into a non-viable corner before they encounter a messy corrective force of their own seeding.
Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming
They're minimum wage employees for the most part, what do you expect? At least when they say something stupid you know it's out of ignorance. Future Shop (pre-and post bestbuy) they would lie to your face just to try get you to buy something you didn't need.