Will reorg as Short Circuit Village.

They were eaten alive by Best Buy. The service sucked. They had terrible corp structure. Two years ago they should of turned it over to Mark Wattles (Hollywood Video king) who owns a ton of stock and wanted to lead the company. The in-fighting would not stop. Now look where they are. Last time I wandered in there nobody even said hello to me. Bunch of pimple faced kids that could of cared less about making a sale...better yet, a customer.
I know things are tough out there, especially for big box chains, but this one deserved some pain. They missed the mark.

It is going to be a bloodbath this holiday season. I can't see Sears, Kmart and possibly JC Penney lasting. There's not enough money to go around and their sales are dropping to levels that make it unsustainable for them to continue to operate. That's the major chains that I can think of and doesn't even start to take in smaller chains and independents. It's going to get very, very ugly.

Circuit City got what they deserved. It was bad karma to fire all the top sales people and then offer them back their jobs.......at minimum wage.

I agree with mp97303. It's Karma.

Anybody remember Incredible Universe? Stereo Super Stores? Magnolia High Fi?

When I was in High School I worked at Billy Blake's Camera department in Smithtown, NY. And yeah, this pimple faced kid DID care about making a sale, as I could earn a commission. (Though if someone had called me a "pimple faced kid" I'd have called them a "dumb old fart.")

Retail is what it is. Like restaurants, bars, casette tapes and Betamax machines, they all come and go. So do we. Its what we call life and evolution. Its not the end of the world. And if it is, I'll make sure I at least TIVO it.

Circuit City stunk. When I needed stereo equipment or home theater advice I worked with real sales people at stores like Chelsea Audio here in town. Go to a place like Chelsea and you'll find sales people who actually know their stuff rather than surly teenagers.

Canucken: I think you are off base on KMart. We have picked up some very good deals at our local KMart in Gresham. And they seem to have a moderate amount of foot traffic anytime you go there. Deals at least as good as Walmart without the parking and checkout hassles.

What will become of all that big box commercial property?

Circuit City stores may be crap but at least their pimple-faced kids let you browse. The last time I was in Best Buy four robotized teenagers cornered me, one after the other, and went through their memorized spiel. It was beyond uncomfortable and I ran away as quickly as possible. Let me play with the cool toys and maybe I might actually buy something.

"Anybody remember Incredible Universe? Stereo Super Stores? Magnolia High Fi?"

Yep. Incredible Universe, the great retail experiment from Tandy Corporation, was purchased lock, stock, and barrel and renamed into Fry's Electronics, which is a successful chain.

Magnolia Hi-Fi was purchased last year by a larger outfit (Best Buy?) and renamed Magnolia Audio Video, and specialized in higher-end stuff that the larger outfit doesn't carry in the big box format due to smaller sales volume and higher ticket price.

"Circuit City stunk. When I needed stereo equipment or home theater advice I worked with real sales people at stores like Chelsea Audio here in town. Go to a place like Chelsea and you'll find sales people who actually know their stuff rather than surly teenagers."

It's worth saying that Chelsea doesn't cater to the wide audience that Circuit City or Best Buy do - they carry much higher quality lines that do much less sales volume.

When's the last time you went into Best Buy and listened to *any* speakers that sounded remotely as good as the lowest end Bowers & Wilkins that Chelsea carries? I'll bet it's some time around never.

What will become of all that big box commercial property?

As long as we maintain the sales tax advantage over Washington and British Columbia, and fuel costs stay relatively low, there will always be demand in Portland for such sites. This is especially true for the one in Jantzen Beach - take a scan of license plates next time you're there.

Quite a while back I saw a statistic for the Portland Metro area that stated that we were oversupplied with retail square footage to the tune of 50%, relative to the rest of the US. The reason offered for this was the lack of sales tax, which I believe to be true. I wonder where this number is at now?

"Pimpled", "surly" and "robotized".

We DO love our children, don't we?

The problem with Circuit City not bugging you as much as they do in Bestbuy is trying to get someone to help you when you actually want to buy something. I've generally had better experiences at CC than BB but now that they moved out of Salem to Keizer I'm rarely over there to just browse or pick up games/movies/music or anything else unless I know about a sale. BB is closer and often has a better selection for those main 3 items. They have for years.

Bestbuy surely is the king of the "warranty" hucksterisms though. "Sir, would you like to buy a warranty on that xbox controller? $10 only!" Yeah, on a $30 controller, suuure.