What’s the fourth?
The article is behind a pay wall.
So who is number 4? I have no intention of signing up to WSJ.com to find out.
The link won’t let you read the story. What is the 4th retailer?
BTW, nobody mentions the real reason Penney’s is down. They were pushing their pro-homosexual agenda in their ads. That didn’t go over well with Penney’s core customers who are mostly middle-aged and older women.
Best Buy can just suck it. I refuse to go into a store that persists in believing that every customer is a frigging thief and relentlessly stops each customer for their papers (their receipts). I also hate your ‘salesmen’ techies that think they’ve got a degree in electrical engineering telling me I need a $200 roll of 25’ monster wire for my speakers.
JC Penney can just suck it, too. In 1986, I had their effing car insurance and had the misfortune of buying a a Nissan 300ZX Turbo; they promptly notified me they would not renew my policy. It is why I am with Cotton States insurance, still these 26 years hence. JC, just suck it! I hope you lose your ass and your cash. You just stay right there in those mauseleums we used to call Malls and die.
Radio Shack, you’ve been there when I needed you, and although you charge more for items of an electronic nature for the enthusiast, I won’t begrudge that because you are convenient. Hope you find a way to emerge successfully...
We call it “Phone Shack” now;although the store has other products and eveen some electronic parts,the parts like switches,resistors,ICs are hidden in opaque metal drawers in cabinets at the back of the store where few would notice.I would guess close to one-half the store space is phone s and related products.
Had not thought of Radio Shack but they might be in the worst shape of the bunch.
Thousands of stores meaning high overhead, and virtually the entire product mix is now related to cell phones, which can be bought at many other places. (the inside joke is “try and find the radio!”)
I remember them from my youth as the place you’d buy small electronic parts for hobbies. Not anymore.
Last time I shopped at Loews for a Dryer, I told them the rice was lower on the internet, they matched the internet price.
IMHO, Sears should transition its stores into a “home center” type of business - concentrate on hardware, major appliances, and automotive. Get rid of clothing, housewares, jewelry, sporting goods, and everything else.
Radio Shack, a main stay for me for 40 years. But electronics is not the hobby it once was and no one “fixes” anything anymore because it is either to hard or to cheap not to just replace it.
I still piddle around and every once in a while need something, but with folks like me disappearing over the years RS has been searching for its place. I fear it may not find it.
I must be old fashioned I love best buy i go in and look and touch the item i want fork over the money and load it it in my truck and take it home Even if it cost more
Circuit City had the right idea how to deal with showrooming. They let you buy from their website and then go pick the item up immediately at the nearest store. Of course, that meant their website had to have real time inventory data for every store in the country - and that is way beyond the capabilities of most retail company IT departments.
Reading the comments over at WSJ on the story, the consensus seems to be that these four retailers aren’t long for this world. Best Buy gets a good deal of ire. With regard to JCP’s, the commenters generally figure that JCP is outdated, they can’t compete with Macy’, and even though their new store layouts and whatnot are all well and good, the stores are understaffed and it’s a case of “a day late and a dollar short”. Sears is pretty much in liquidation mode, the only thing they have going for them is the Kenmore and Craftsman brands....customer service is awful, when it can be found at least. Radio Shack is useful for finding obscure items, but it’s too much of a niche market to be truly competitive.
Those are so big names in American retail. But most likely, I figure Sears and JCP will go the way of the Montgomery Wards by sometime later next year. Maybe earlier. Radio Shack, maybe. I honestly don’t know enough about Best Buy, as I’ve never shopped there once, so I can’t say.
It’s ironic. Sears and JCP were the Amazon.com of their era. They built their retail empires with their catalogs, and made millions through the US Mail. Someone at both of those retailers sure as hell fell asleep sometime during the 1990s, and now the forces of free enterprises are going to drink their milkshake.
Best Buy provides an absolutely awful shopping experience each and every time I go there (which is fortunately increasingly less often). Virtually nobody who works at the store has any real knowledge of the products they carry there and if they did, they'd move on to a better job. Think about it. If you must shop there however, stay away from the "extended warranties" (which are a scam) and all accessories like cables, chargers and connectors which are horrendously overpriced. If you need any of the latter, go over to monoprice.com and you will get virtually any cable, charger or connector you want at only a fraction of the price. They are priced so cheap at that site that I usually order two of whatever I am buying so I have an extra.
Radio Shack...it is a mystery to me how they are able to stay in business. Whenever I walk into one, I am usually the only customer in the entire store. They stopped making you give your name and address for buying a battery a long time ago but virtually everything in their little stores can be bought on Amazon.com for less money. Their only redeeming factor is they still sell things that you thought were obsolete 20 years ago. So if you need something like an audio cassette recorder or a cheap transistor radio for the beach, that is the place to go for that.
Brick and mortar retail as a whole is a dying industry. In a few years, Amazon.com (and other companies like it) will put vehicles on the road 24/7 that will deliver an order to you in hours or even minutes. So if you are out of toothpaste, there will be a van in your neighborhood that will drop it on your doorstep 15 minutes later. Sounds far-fetched but business plans are being developed right now to do just that. These vans will have access to various "drops" in their area where merchandise of all types will be stored and replenished based on demand in a given area.
Google is working on vehicles that drive themselves. Not so much for people but for these sort of deliveries.
Best Buy: generally there’s a lot (lot!) of employees around, but somehow they manage to make the service you get, suck. Returns section which also houses online store pickups is always busy and while there’s 10 people back there only 2 are actually taking customers to help.
JCPenney: the expected pro-homo craze backfired on them big time. Further trying to be Old Navy when you’re just “Old” doesn’t cut it. The insides and outsides of the stores look like what you’d think an upscale soviet department store from the 1980s would look like.
Radio Shack: the comic book stores of the electronics world. Helpful service folks, but the place is always understaffed. Often not in great neighborhoods but strip malls in iffy areas of town.
Sears: has some of the JCP issues without the I love homos failed campaign. Often can’t match prices elsewhere, stuffy store layouts that make people unsure where they are going (or even are currently), desperately needing modern store remodels, some departments have no people out on the floor for customers.
We ordered a Kay banjo from Sears back in the early 60’s.
Great banjo. My sister still uses it for gigs in Austin.
My dad made my brother’s first guitar amp from parts ordered from Allied catalog ... he just looked in the back of a Fender amp and knew what he needed. We thought everybody did that. ;o) He also assembled all his own ham radio gear. He read schematics like we read the funny papers.
http://www.alliedcatalogs.com/
He was also a great fiddle/guitar player. Still is at 82.
Radio Shack is a joke.
Sears / Craftsman used to be some of the best tools in the business. No more.
Best Buy is where I go to see the product and write down the model number. Then, I go home to check prices online.
J.C. Penney? Are they still around?
” Best Buy Co. BBY -1.22% has been plagued by the retail phenomenon called “showrooming,”...”
So, it’s OK to shroom at Best Buy?
Best Buy deserves to go under just for foisting Vista and Windows 8 on U.S. consumers by refusing to offer superior alternatives such as XP and Windows 7 respectively.