A reminder that two of those three didn’t fall, they were killed by vulture capital
Private equity spent most of the 90’s destroying Montgomery Ward and Eddie Lampert held Sears/KMart under the water until the bubbles stopped so he could cry to anyone that would listen that the retail business was failing while he made a fortune selling off the company’s real estate.
Yup, they deliberately ran it into the ground. They took out loans against Kmart to buy Sears and sold Sears and Kmart properties off to give themselves money via stock buybacks.
And what’s worse, because it worked, you can see similar actions happening to other major retail outlets. Target, in particular, seems to be following directly in the footsteps of Kmart.
Thanks for clearing the misconception. Are there any books on this you’d recommend?
There was a Wisconsin retail chain, Shopko, that fell to this, too. They bought the company, then took out loans against all the properties. Those loans were paid out as bonuses to the board, but the company had to pay the bill.
Then they minimally staffed the stores. One person handling registers, one or two behind the customer service counter, and one or two people on the floor to handle stocking and helping customers. If you needed help, you could easily be waiting around 15 minutes for anyone to come. This for a store that, while not as big as a Super Walmart, is around the size of a regular Walmart.
During the inevitable bankruptcy, it was revealed that the money taken at the register for state sales taxes was pocketed by the company rather than paid to the state.
All under the guise of “brick and mortar can’t compete with Amazon”. Competition was not the problem. Shopko was murdered by its own board of directors.
I still won’t forgive Shopko for consuming Pamida and ultimately taking the remnants of Pamida down with it.
I’m surprised to see on Wikipedia that Shopko actually owned Pamida basically the entire time I was growing up, they just ran it independently. They even broke up breifly before re-merging later. The second merger sent it all to shit, though. “Shopko Hometown” my ass.
Shopko
Memory triggered. There was a Shopko in Nebraska near where my grandfather lived. I remember buying Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, and Mega Man Soccer there in 1994. Well, at least two of the games were great!
Why do i feel like crying…
“Fun” fact: Bain Capital killed both TRU and KayBee Toys.
Once again “the earth” is supposedly synonymous with “that one country in North America”…
It’s true. North America does in fact exist on planet earth.
All three of these businesses were worldwide so fail.
Except for circuit City before some “akchually” guy corrects me, but it was still multinational (as in 2 nations to be exact).
Yeah, ToysRUs is alive and well in Canada. I have no idea that the bottom-right one is.
Circuit City
TigerDirect
It’s a Circuit City.
I bought my first PC’s parts all from TigerDirect’s website. Did a bunch of my research for it using their catalogue.
Nowadays I’m just happy to live an hour from a Microcenter.
TigerDirect eventually acquired the rights for the Circuit City name, years after the stores closed. They were great for awhile, it was just weird that they tried to revive the brand.
I bought my first PC parts at CompUSA, which… I don’t think I’ve seen for a very long time lol. Definitely used TigerDirect when I was in college though.
TIL, thanks!
And TigerDirect also obtained the rights to the CompUSA name. That didn’t last long in the retail space either.
In my town, TigerDirect resurrected the actual physical defunct CompUSA location and reopened it, and then that location tanked again shortly thereafter.
Apropos of nothing, our long-abandoned Circuit City building is apparently finally being revamped into… An Aldi. For fuck’s sake.
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Once again “the earth” is supposedly synonymous with “that one country in North America”…
they gave North American examples but the statement is universally true
Lemmy users any time someone references anything American
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1 of the three was killed to make some hedge fund richer. Toys r us would not have died if it hadn’t been shorted in to oblivion.
I never understood circuit city. The local one ran prices 10-20% higher then best buy a few blocks over. You’d only ever go there when best buy ran out of dvd-r’s.
That being said whoever worked in their gaming section and kept updating the demo kiosk with every game now labeled a “hidden gem”… Props because those were always fresh picks.
Odd, it was the other way around where I lived. CC had the best prices while BB was overpriced, and like you said, CC’s gaming section was great.
They didn’t fall, they left.
Yup. Toys R Us still lives and it’s still going strong in many countries like Canada and many European countries
Same as Malaysia as well, it make waves on the news but in the end it just affect the US.
You can blame BCG and shitty hedge funds for that
Wasn’t that Mitt Romney and Trump’s Secretary of the Treasury? (I forget his name.) But I remember him looking like a Bond villain.
you mean Munchkin?
Stahp I just watched a 2-hour video analysis of liminal spaces I can only get so hauntological
Toys r Us is still going strong in Canada
Well I wouldn’t say strong
What’s the one on the bottom right?
For us Canadians it would be future shop, which was basically Canadian best buy till best buy showed up
Years ago, I had a friend who worked at Best Buy and was fired (he’s a nice guy, but lazy, so I’m not surprised). He then went to work to work at Circuit City. He found out that most everyone who worked there was also fired from Best Buy.
To me, this explains a lot.
Funnily enough, in my town there used to be a Future Shop, and then a Best Buy sprung up in the new commercial district, but apparently couldn’t compete because it closed 2 years later. Then about a year later Best Buy bought Future Shop and they re-branded the existing Future Shop to Best Buy.
wow that’s a terrible logo
Circuit City IIRC
Look up on my works ye mighty and despair
Look upon my works and despair.
I miss my frys electronics and their goofy buildings
At least microcenter will come to my hometown soon
My only complaint with microcenter is that the commission in incentives come off as extreme. Like I will be walking around with something in my hand and a rando will come up to me, say “hey there boss, lemme just slap this on that for you,” and proceed to put a sticker on it with their ID. Not a big deal, but palpable, and makes it harder to just browse.
Time to swap it out for an unlabeled one I guess 🤷
Nah, no hard feelings towards the retail folks, they’re doing what they’re supposed to. It’s just that I wish the corporate incentives were different so it felt more like the staff were trying to help.
Like the Pizza Hut turned Bank turned Chinese Food Restaurant turned Fed Ex Pack and Ship
Turned back to pizza hut in a few instances
