RIP: Circuit City

[thewayne]

After being unable to secure a merger with Blockbuster or other financial alternatives, they've received permission from a judge to liquidate their company, so if you're looking for a good deal on post-Christmas electronics, now could be a good time.

I've never been a big fan of CC, I've never liked their selection or their commission-based sales approach, but some people prefer them for electronics. To each their own. It's going to create a huge glut of big-box space, I'll bet most of those stores stay vacant for a lot of years. This will also (somewhat) shore up Best Buy since you won't have as many brick & mortar sites to visit to compare. Not that BB was in danger of folding, but they did offer a huge "retirement encouragement" program to their senior employees late last 2008.

Maybe next weekend I'll go down to El Paso and see if there's any good deals out for stuff that I don't need.

http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/C/CIRCUIT_CITY_BANKRUPTCY?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-11-10-07-50-06

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/01/16/195203

Comments

[silveradept]

I'm thinking I may be visiting the store soon to see what sort of prices I can get on their equipment, but CC has also always been far more expensive than other places. Maybe the liquidation will bring their prices back into line with others.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Maybe, but not for long. :-)

[deborak]

Don't rush. They only have 10 - 30 percent markdowns on selected stuff this weekend. And that's on top of their inflated prices, so you're really not getting a deal at all. We stopped by yesterday for lulz and Bill confirmed a cheaper price online for every electronic component he priced.

I've noticed that the liquidators for these companies aren't really trying to offer their lowest prices to the general public. When the local Linens N Things went out of business their prices weren't down more than 50% on the very last day. These inventories are really destined for the bulk resellers market, the wholesalers who will buy them at auction and then pimp them via internet auction sites.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Part of their problem is that they weren't price competitive, then enormous bunglings of corporate strategy. I'm not surprised they're done for, nor am I surprised about "distressed inventory" companies: it would be a good business to buy in to or start if you had the capital.