Adventures in Retail
On Saturday I went to Mr. Car Wash to have the snow-clots blasted off the undercarraige, then drove around to have new ones put on. On the way back I passed two unhappy men standing on a frontage road spinning signs announcing store closings and bargains the likes of which had not been possible since the Huns sacked Rome. Which reminds me – we all now Rome wasn’t built in a day, but we seem to think it fell in a day. An afternoon, maybe. The Huns showed up on Jan 1st, 500 AD, and gave Rome a good push; over it went. The details are indistinct – you picture some rough stupid Hun sitting on the Roman Throne, putting his feet up while his underlings knock over statues and burn tapestries; after that, the Middle Ages. Or so we learned in school.
Anyway. Two guys, each with a sign, each pointing you towards different stores. Circuit City, long rotten from within, had finally collapsed; the other store was Cost Plus World Market Long Store Name, which was pulling out of this market. (They’re in a small big-box strip mall called “Circuit City Plaza,” and I imagine they’ll have to change the name.) For as long as I can remember I’ve had my doubts about the place. When it opened, it seemed as if they’d over-retailed the area. One of the first anchors, HomePlace (We’ve eliminated the space between the two words and passed along the savings to you), was just like Bed Bath & Beyond, without the latter’s promise of infinity. It lasted a few years before it collapsed, and the store emptied out. At the time I thought: well, we do have too much retail.
Its neighbor, CompUSA, was ruined a few years ago by the usual suspects – Best Buy, Amazon, the Internet, and a spectacularly stupid move into high-end television sets and movies. Because you can’t get those anywhere else. They reduced the shelf-space for actual software and filled it with DVDs and CDs – again, items of such remarkable rarity you snatched them up whenever you came across them. It was also noted for its lengthy receipts, which – as befits a high-tech store – were threaded into an Addressograph to be physically imprinted with your credit card info. They also had an Apple department that competed with an Apple store up the street, which is a bit like a kissing booth competing with a lap-dance store.
CompUSA had once been a place of great joy and promise – O the afternoons I spent there on weekend errands with the Giant Swede, shopping for games, studying the new releases. Got my first copy of Doom there. Made the Swede pick up the shareware disk: trust me. Just – trust me. The store had a brief lease on life when its nearby competition, Computer City, died. Then CompUSA went, and I thought: well, we do have too much retail.
Computer City’s space was filled by Hold Everything, a place that sold items into which you could put other items. The chain failed, and the space was filled by Storables, a place that sold similar items into which you could put other items. That particular retail center is doing okay, but a new retail mall opened a block to the north; it has a Container Store, which is a place that sells all manner of items into which you can place other items. I wouldn’t be surprised if Storables passes from the scene. It’s possible the area only needs one store that sells giant plastic tubs.
Circuit City? Meh. They lost my business years ago during a cellphone signup. They also had a Soviet-flavored model for getting your merch – you’d pay for it at once place, present the receipt, and wait for someone to bring it from the back. Haste and cheer did not seem high on the agenda, and they also seemed to specialize in oily young managers who oozed a slick of avarice, lechery, failure and contempt. Three out of four I can take if I must, but they hit all the wrong notes.
It took a while to find a spot in the parking lot, since the place was full of scavengers eager to pick the meat off the bones. Finally made it in to CostPlusWorldMarketPlace:
I looked for some interesting food items from other countries – it’s the only place where you could get Spotted Dick with Curry, at least unless you went four blocks north to Byerly’s – but everything interesting was sold out. I bought four tumblers that matched four tumblers I already own. They were ten percent off. I saved 76 cents. Man, they weren’t kidding:
They’ll even tell you about ex-spouses and lingering anger towards their parents! Nothing held back!
I didn’t go to Circuit City, because I suspected that anything I wanted would be either gone or still more expensive than Amazon. Sorry, fellows.
Drove north past Storables, past the Container Store, and went to Target. Prominently displayed:
Giant plastic tubs into which you can put other items.
On sale!
Saturday shopping wasn’t confined to buying glassware at 10 percent off. Oh my stars no. There was grocery shopping. On a bad weekend I end up going to three places, because not one has everything I need. The pre-cut packs of Sweet Tart Apples for daughter’s school lunch, for example. Why not buy regular apples and cut the damned things up myself? Oh, I don’t know. Because I’m lazy. Because it’s always 12:25 AM when I’m making her lunch, and I don’t want to mess with knives. Mostly because she likes them, and when she likes something that comes from the ground I am loathe to change a single detail.
At Cub there were the usual peculiarities. From the makers of the ever-popular Beef Segments:
Yum. What’s for dinner? Portions. What kind of portions? Sea-kitten portions.Yay!
And in the inevitable Capt. Crunch tie-in:
I’m starting to think there’s a form of mimicry only certain cereal mascots have perfected; it enables them to assume the protective colorings of any festivity and blend right in.
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A going-out-of-business sale and everything is TEN PERCENT OFF!
…which kind of shows you the reason that they’re going out of business.
Say there, Fisherboy! That’s some great catch!
I was in Kauai, stopped at the Safeway to stockup the condo, and saw Cap’n Crunch’s “Oops Beries”. Indeed it was ALL berries (get it? oops we forgot the rest of the cereal…). Do you see what they have in Paradise, that they don’t have back home? Duh, because it’s Paradise! Of course they had it back home a month later.
Best Oreos evah! In Kauai also, on another trip. They were doing construction at the Time Share, and they advised us at check in that they were currently experiencing an ANT problem (not so paradise-y after all – we can get that at home). They suggested even dry foods go into the refrigerator. Our friends who met us in the islands for Christmas that year, and had picked up reduced calorie Oreos. Really, what’s the point? At first I balked; suggested to my friend that his charming bride wasn’t quite right in the head. But soon desperation set in, and good lord! Refrigerated Oreos rock! The same experiment was not successful back at home, so I attribute it to the tropical climate, or longitude and latitude – but they were exquisite!
Ah, yes, CompUSA, the land of the harried POS employees who loathed the rebate programs as much as we loathed the fourteen feet of receipts and the search for rebate forms, followed by the actual rebate process itself, which usually consisted of three and a half hours of paperwork and a palliative animal sacrifice to a minor god of retail scams. (And don’t forget the nine follow-up phone calls you will need to make to check on the status of your months-overdue $3.00 rebate.)
And Circuit City, the store that employed the salesman who, five years ago, tried to convince me to buy a digital-ready (see also “significantly more expensive”) TV rather than the one I had chosen because “the government is forcing us all to go to digital this September, and your TV will no longer work”.
And World Market, which I actually liked. In fact, it’s one of the few stores I would go out of my way to visit, just to browse. They had a nice selection of teas, it was fun to buy British candies and biscuits for the kids at Christmastide, and I don’t think I ever spent more than $10 in the store at one time, because goodness gracious the stuff was overpriced and my wallet would weld itself shut every time I walked in the place.
Was the person in the photo of World Market buying a cat or small dog or did he/ she bring her own?
CompUSA was a great store… back in 1996. The problem was that for the most part, they pretty much stayed in 1996 for the next ten years, aside from the aforementioned ill-advised foray into not-so-computery electronics. Eventually, they were just overpriced and understocked, and the shelves were filled mostly with shovelware.
Can’t say I’ll miss Circuit City all that much either, given the fact that even the going-out-of-business closeout prices on a lot of the stuff there are still higher than Amazon prices.
Just did our part to help Circuit City reduce their inventory. I don’t consider a discount of 10% a real doorbuster, but maybe if they had consistently offered 10% off the marked prices (which would bring it to within spitting distance of Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Everybody Else) we wouldn’t be attending the wake this month.
I remember CompUSA back when it was Softwarehouse, and was THE place for geeks to go. I went in there a couple of years ago to look for some hard drive screws, and and was forced to conclude that they had turned into “Best Buy without the refrigerators”. Quite a disappointment. But I have Fry’s, so I am content.
The Container Store is like a high-end hardware store: I go there to look for the things I don’t know I need until I see them, and I usually find one or two. Supply-side economics on the hoof — I keep expecting to bump into Jean-Baptiste Say buying some Elfa shelving.
DensityDuck, I don’t think Cost Plus World Market is going out of business; I think they’re just closing that location. There’s one a block from my home that shows no signs of closing. So they’re probably just trying to thin the inventory so as not to have to transfer so much to other locations.
Sea-kittens? SEA-KITTENS? No!! We do not eat sea-kittens here!
They are called fish. OK? Spelled G-H-O-T-I. We will not call them sea-kittens. They live as fish, they are cooked as fish and they are eaten as fish; not sea-kittens. OK? Just remember, sea-kittens are bad. OK?
We’ve also got a number of these container stores and similar places around here (some more high-end than others.) The fundamental problem of a place like that is that when you drive by the place, you see big shelves full of empty containers, and it makes it look like the place isn’t actually selling anything.
Cap’n Crunch’s eyebrows are too freaky. Are they adamantium that cuts through his headwear? Are they remote control helium balloons? Are they symbiotic flying organisms? Holograms? Induced hallucinations?
James,
I am curious why would you use curry on Spotted Dick. Spotted Dick is high-calorie raisin & currant pudding. An odd choice to add curry. Like curry-flavored bananas maybe?
How about some Clootie Dumplings? Deep-fried chunks of pig fat served in oil. Traditional Scottish dish. Often served with Haggis. Curry would help here.
Circuit City was the worst store I’ve ever had the misfortune to patronize. The email we received from the purported president’s office is not to be believed. No doubt he got out with his funds intact. Even the young kids working the floor were surly.
Cap’n Crunch’s Spotted Dick Breakfast Cereal. Now with Curried Cloorie Dumplings!
Makes me long for gruel.
Bob
Why have Cap’n Crunch’s nether regions been censored?
I dropped by Circuit City today, I’m hoping to get a nice 22″ LCD monitor. Best Buy has one for about $200, CC no. Theirs weren’t even hooked up so you could look at them. And they’ve got a weird exit, you can’t go out the way you came in, even though there aren’t registers near the exit. Bad design on top of bad management.
Or did a couple of senior managers make a bet, one of them saying “I can run this business into bankruptcy in two years.”
Tatties, neeps, and Haggis.
Oh, and the real haggis in the skin, not the stuff in plastic and surely not the vegetarian kind.
In a previous incarnation, I was a reporter for a consumer electronics retailing trade magazine. At that time, Circuit City was the #1 retailer in the category. It was crucial that we report on them.
But Circuit City absolutely refused to ever ever ever speak to the electronics trade press. The only major retailer to have such a policy. Made my job quite a chore, it did. We finally resorted to buying a share of stock and then travelling to their annual stockholders meeting, where their slimey CEO would HAVE to answer at least ONE question.
Pardon me while I do a little jig on Circuit City’s grave. Arrogant bastages.
[...] “Meh,” says Lileks: They lost my business years ago during a cellphone signup. They also had a Soviet-flavored model [...]
_@_v – sea kitties? om nom nom nom nom nom!!!!!
Gosh, I hated Cap’n Crunch cereal when I was a kid. The crunchiness was
so overdone that it was like chewing on a cheese grater. The roof of my mouth was shredded. Evil, evil cereal.
I always called it ‘Circuitous City’ because of the soviet style way they release the merchandise to you. I went by one over the weekend, noted that the prices, even with the discounts, were higher than Best Buy or ‘Other’. Another CC store nearby had closed a few weeks earlier, it was a store that had opened only a few weeks before it closed. Odd to see a Grand Opening sale followed immediately by a Going Out of Business sale… Methinks there’s poor planning in the City.
Went to Circuit City on Friday before the Bankruptcy announcement, found the video camera I wnated for $299. Was told by the salesman about the bankruptcy and that everything would be 10% off starting Saturday. OK, I’ll come back tomorrow! Went back Saturday and indeed all camera were 10% off, but the price of the camera was now $300! They raised the price $100 so they could discount it 10%! Practices like this, in addition to the runaround you get at checkout, are why they are going under.
Tim of Angle: I’ve got Fry’s here, too. I never go anywhere else, except one time when I got a Best Buy gift card for Christmas. (And what’s that about? “Merry Christmas! Your gift is an obligation to go to a store you don’t like!”)
If you don’t know Fry’s, think of a Radio Shack that’s the size of a Home Depot.
The Cap’n seems to have been wrapped in brown paper, like an adult magazine.
Circus Shyttie. always curious, but they used to have good help. until all the good help was thrown out by clueless tower-beasts, who figured you can’t go wrong selling high-tech stuff to grandpas and immigrants by having McHelp at McStarvation McWages. or less.
goodby circus Shyttie.
another thing about GOB sales… the same bunch of liquidators bid for all these outfits’ inventory. so you get massive price reductions of 10 to 30 percent… off manufacturer’s suggested retail. a gizmo that was $199.97 Thursday, closed for bankruptcy churning Friday, and Saturday, the gizmo is now $259.38, must sell all, nothing held back.
nope, the contempt shines through loud and clear.
I’m going to miss World Markup. The place did some serious damage to my checkbook on occasion, as I’d stumble across overpriced treats and trinkets that I just couldn’t pass up. ‘Twas a great place to pick up gifts, if only because most of my friends and family didn’t frequent the place much. It’s hard to surprise somebody with gifts from Target, since they’ve surely walked past the exact same endcap within 72 hours of you.
If you go to a CC liquidation sale, be very careful to check the prices before you buy; when they turn the store’s inventory over to the liquidator, it’s immediately marked up to MSRP, and discounting begins from there. “10% off” may well be 30% more than you’d have paid two weeks ago.
It doesn’t start to become a bargain until they get into the 40% to 50% off range, by which time most everything’s already gone.
Sorry to be a pain, but it wasn’t “technically” the huns that over ran Rome in the fourth century, but rather the Visigoths led by Alaric.
I bring this up because Alaric is my son’s name… and since then I’ve become a fan of the Goths (not the high school kind that wear black lipstick and listen to The Cure.)
I love your website!