Circuit City to Shut Down

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As a follow-up to last week’s new post (here), it seems Circuit City has asked the courts for approval to close its 567 stores in the U.S. and liquidate its assets.

"We are extremely disappointed by this outcome," James Marcum, acting CEO for Circuit City, said in a statement. "We were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company."
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I worked there for 4 years and still have a lot of friends who work(ed) there. I feel bad for my friends and the other employees who will lose their jobs. However, I can't say this is unexpected. Firing their senior sales staff a while back was a boneheaded move on their part, and they also picked the wrong time to expand and open 165 new stores. Many of those new stores were built, but never opened. Ultimately, brick and mortar electronics stores are going to have to find ways to compete with the NewEgg's, Wal-Mart's, etc if they want to stay in business.
 
Circuit City has always been overpriced.

Their "sales" are actually retail prices minus some jacked-up figure they come up with to make it look like you are getting a deal.

Glad they are going down. I feel bad for the employees, but the consumer ultimately wins this one as another overpriced B&M outfit bites the dust.

I would expect their liquidation sale to go about the same as CrapUSA's did. The liquidators will try to squeeze every penny out of bargain seekers, and won't really offer anything good.
 
Looks like that management decision to layoff experienced employees for lower paid ones back in 2007 really worked out. :rolleyes: I personally hated going to Circuit City stores after that decision was made. I always felt like I was walking into a fast food restaurant, not a high dollar electonics store, with the amount of young, inexperienced employees I was having to deal with.

I'd be curious to know how much money the executives of Circuit City from January 2007 until January of 2009 made off with after that stupid decision that ultimately drove Circuit City into the ground.
 
Too bad... Best Buy needs some competition.
Both Circuit City and Best Buy have really sucky sales-droids (in general.) The good ones wouldn't ever stick around for very long... but because I'm a tech geek, I'd always cringe whenever they ever tried to "help" me with electronics or computers.

I bought a lot of games from CC because their prices were usually better than BB and most other places when the games first came out. One of the dudes at my local CC was quite a gamer and actually gave me some good advice about the plusses and minuses of many games.

Their stores were always kind of grungy looking and they just didn't have the size to have the same selection as BB when it came to electronics/computers.

I feel sorry for all the employees that will soon be out of work. With the economy the way it is, it looks like they're going to have a hard time finding another job. :-(
 
i remember going in there once for a gfx card fucking thing was so over priced a management guy was close by and said what do i need to sell it at and we will make it happen this was many years ago mind you but i said eh frack it i'll wait and go online
 
I feel bad for all of the people that will be losing their jobs. But I've never been in a Circut City that had resonable prices. Maybe they will have a few good deals in the sell off. But I doubt it will be worth my money to drive the 1 hour to the cloest one.
 
The CIrcuit CIty near me generally had good prices on newly released movies, but that's about it.
I'll be sorry to see the chain go out of business though, even if it wasn't a great one.
 
Circuit City was never the place to get good deals, but it had two things going for it - 1) it typically had better sales than Best Buy (IMO) and 2) it wasn't Best Buy. Wally World never has what I need and Best Buy's prices are sky-high, so today is a sad day indeed for me.
 
yeah this was a long time coming. I knew that getting rid of commission sales people was a bad idea when I used to work there.in some way I'm sad to see them go. but not sad enough to not say they deserve everything they are getting considering the choices they made.
 
This is indeed bad news for my area as Best Buy is now the only choice. :( Oh well online only for now on I guess.
 
Colt___45 said:
Ultimately, brick and mortar electronics stores are going to have to find ways to compete with the NewEgg's, Wal-Mart's, etc if they want to stay in business.
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It's tough. Yeah, for many items, a number of consumers aren't willing to purchase online (larger items, such as TVs, in addition to general home appliances such as microwaves, dishwashers, clothes dryers, vacuums, etc.), but I'm certain that, at this point, a large number of consumers are purchasing others types of goods online or digitally, such as music and movies, and have few reasons to step into their local B&M.

Amazon Prime, especially when it dips down to $59/year, as it does occasionally, is an absolute B&M killer. Granted, not everything falls under the Prime blanket, but I imagine most people could manage just fine with what's covered.

I for one didn't totally dislike Circuit City, but it's plainly obvious to any CC shopper that things just weren't being run properly. I have fresh memories of waiting an hour to do an in-store pickup on a $5 item on the Saturday after Black Friday, as a for instance. A pretty clear and obvious case of Circuit City trying to compete with the likes of Best Buy without actually being infrastructurally capable of doing so, due to what I presume to be excessive cost-cutting.

I think a B&M can be successful if it focuses on A) products consumers don't tend to purchase online, B) as many high-markup products and relevant services as possible, without overextending, and C) an absolute mind-blowing level of customer service. Very few retail chain stores can seem to grasp the concept of how valuable customer service is, Circuit City least of all.

To me, this comes as no surprise. In the forest that is the retail market, the toppling of a giant gives much-needed opportunity to the little guys down below who've been struggling for sunlight. I'm curious to see where this all goes.
 
My local CC was advertising for more staff recently, I thought that seemed a bit optimistic.

Oh well, that'll be 567 new coffee shops we can look forward to.
 
Not really a loss for me. The people losing here are those who are employed by them and those who are now left with only best buy in town.

Sadly, the directors/holders/board members are probably all laughing to the bank.
 
Can't say this was a surprise. I've never liked CC and don't think I've ever bought anything at one. Microcenter and Frys are probably examples of a workable business model for B&M electronics. Overall though the egg is where I shop:)
 
circuit citys problem was over expansion and propping up shops to close to best buys to try to steal some of their traffic... the could not find a buyer cause who would buy the assets in a failed business plan. when they started liquidating they should cut their any store that was not moving product out the door. in the end they were not aggressive enough on price to compete in the market.
 
Funny thing about their stores. The parking lots always looks trashed (overgrown shrubs, bare dirt spots, trash / baskets all over the place) and the buildings are a nasty faded rust color (not nearly the vibrant color of their logo or website)..........

They have low ceilings with not nearly enough light - made me feel I was in a seedy book / movie store.....

Will anyone notice that they are closed down as the stores sit and wait for someone else to occupy them?
 
Just bought a gigabit switch from CC on Wednesday 01/14. Will undoubtedly be the last thing I ever buy from CC, because I'm willing to bet that their liquidation prices will be as bad as CompUSAs.
 
+ to all comments made so far. i share similar feelings about CC

While I very rarely bought anything from there (can count them on one hand), I used them a few times to price match Best Buy. While I can't stand Best Buy either, it's really the only store around here. I live in a major city, too. :(
 
I tried so many times to buy from CC. Even after they started building their stores with enough space to actually breath, I found myself walking out without buying.
 
I fail to see how any one can see this as a good thing for the consumer. Take any personal grudge to best buy now and pay more since you can count on their prices going up now that choice is removed from the equation. Walmart to me is not a competitor of CC or BB since they only sell junk for the most part. If you are looking a movie well yes but sorry their high end selection of electronics is not high end. Let the consumer shaft get turned a little tighter now that competition has been eliminated.
 
Litfod said:
My local CC was advertising for more staff recently, I thought that seemed a bit optimistic.

Oh well, that'll be 567 new coffee shops we can look forward to.
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No Shit.... my Local wienerschnitzel closed down and is now opening up as a drive through Whorebucks Aptly named for the fact, that just like whores there is one on almost every corner.
 
circuit city usually had good prices on dv-r's and cd-r's, i usually just check out the sundays paper for their sales to see if its worth my time.
 
Hasn't CC been shutting down for the past 5 years? I could have sworn I've read numerous articles over the years "CC is shutting down!" and then the rush to get all the deals.. but they remain.
 
I'll never shop at Best Buy again unless it's some smoking deal like another Rocketfish case for $50.. so I hope they go out of business too. Their shitty customer service and insane mark-up deserves to take them under.
 
Sadly this is a downside of being a public company and when you cater to shareholders more than your customers and employees this happens. Also when you continue to make poor management decisions and reward them with bonuses.
 
They've never had *great* prices, nor very high quality equipment. Sorry for the employees... I still won't miss the store that much, though. I might sneak in to see about a 'closing soon' sale...but doubt I'll find anything.
 
I remember waiting to checkout and was forced to wait for like 15 minute as the associates are doing who knows what. Haven't set foot in one for like 3 years now.
 
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