Posted on 02/02/2013 7:00:46 AM PST by DemforBush
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And while successful retailers in 2012 may add stores this year, those that have performed very poorly may have to cut locations during 2013 to improve margins or reverse losses.
For many retailers, the sales situation is so bad that it is not a question of whether they will cut stores, but when and how many.
-Snip-
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
It pains me to see Sears go down the crapper. I've tried to remain a loyal Sears customer ever since I turned a wrench in their automotive department during college over 20 years ago. They just can't (or won't) compete anymore. Case in point, I'm currently in the market for a second full-size refrigerator to replace the cheap mini-fridge in my garage that crapped out last week. Sears is not only more expensive (by $50-100 depending on the cubic feet) than both Lowes and Home Depot but they want to charge me $59 to deliver the new fridge and another $10 to haul away the old one. Lowes and HD will do both for free!
Can you still buy a radio in Radio Shack? Or will they rename it Phone Shack?
Lucky you. I went to Radio Shack to replace a 1/2 amp slo-blo fuse for a guitar amplifier that blew out. They didn't have it and I had to order it online (where countless vendors carried it).
If you can't get a simple fuse at Radio Shack, what good are they for?
Wow, still nothing has changed.
My last encounter with Radio Shaft was over 15 years ago, maybe closer to 20. I needed a foreign adapter plug for some audio/video cord. RS was my last resort even then, but the item was not carried anywhere else in the area.
I was expecting annoying and aggressive service based on my occasional visits over many years and in different stores (and states), but it had been a few years since I had been in one because of these bad memories. I had hoped that RS really wasn't as horrid as I had remembered.
Wrong. The problem *was* systemic and the obnoxious sales clerk was operating on a whole new level of pushiness and snark. For a $3 cash sale he sure didn't wan't to take no for an answer when demanding personal info. Geez if I hadn't checked around to every other store first I would have walked out, but OTOH the arrogant punk needed to be put in his place.
He went from feigned politeness to snippy insistence to playing victim, saying that management expected him to obtain the info or it would reflect poorly on his performance. ? Seriously? I mean lol the little sh!t was doing pretty "well" on his own. Then he moved on to drama queen mode with a resigned huff of hostility and exasperation as he rang up the sale. Hey all I said was "No" (repeatedly), and that "This is a cash sale". :)
It was truly bizarre but my theory was that he was exactly the kind of employee management wanted, so why complain. I just decided never to go back.
Times I've been to one of the local malls in the past year: 0.
Times I've been to one of the local gun stores in the past year: 10+.
Hmm, maybe mall management should court some gun stores, try to get them in there. Oh, that's right, the malls around here are "gun free zones." LOL Sure they are...
Back in the day I could spend hours with a Radio Shack or Edmunds Scientific catalog. Herter's too for other stuff.
“Like northern NJ needed another mall or something...”
Well, they probably felt they needed one there because it is in a county that has Blue Laws and they wanted to exempt it); currently NYC shoppers (to avoid the higher NY/NYC taxes) have to drive further on Sundays to reach a mall.
Officials admitted after it failed to open that it was really for foreign NYC tourists, and since much of that tourism dried up the anchors were only committing to using the minimum space allowed under their agreements. Americans weren’t supposed to be shopping there; they were supposed to be serving meals and cleaning toilets there.
“On a side-note: how cool would it be for that Super Bowl to be the 2 Manning brothers facing each other, a segue from the brother vs. brother on the sidelines Super Bowl of this year”
That would be great; I wouldn’t mind seeing Eli do the same job on Peyton that he did on Brady (twice). There is also a possibility (if they still have their jobs) of the fat brothers that manage the Cowboys and Jets facing each other (or the Giants and Jets facing each other in what is supposed to be the home stadium of both). Now we’re really fantasizing, because the Jets suck so badly anyway; they won once (before I was born), then during my lifetime the Giants won four and lost one.
You mean Cell Phone Shack. They have drifted so far from what they were, there is no reason to go to shop in one. You are hard pressed to find a Radio in the building.
Big K Mart has shut two stores around our area recently. There are only two that I can think of around the counties near here now.
I think they’ll keep something there; they’ve built up the whole area (new roads, hotels, parks, and such), now they’re just waiting for people with discretionary income to show up. They should never have moved the Devils to Newark (not exactly teeming with hockey fans), and I’m glad to see Bergen County has kept the arena open (despite objections from NEwark & Essex County); now people have a choice as to where they’d like to see the circus or concerts (many book dates at both venues). When they were building “The Rock” in Newark they kept insisting there was enough business for both places (initially there was no mention of closing the Meadowlands arena); when it was finished they started pressing to close it, saying it was stealing business from them (they wanted to force working whites to patronize a black area). So far, so good; it was nice to see the NJ Nets escape to Brooklyn as well. They don’t go for that banana republic crap, and their owner knows that having blacks around doesn’t mean they can buy tickets to basketball games.
Thanks for the link; I know they want to do something with it, but people (especially in northen NJ, where property taxes are high and a lot of financial jobs have been lost to Asia) simply have no money for “recreational shopping”. Municipal employees are still doing well, but that is about it.
Lots of people aren't going to be happy when Amazon's showroom closes their doors. Where else will they be able to play with the latest electronic gadgets before placing their order on Amazon?
Last time I shopped at a Radio Shack (which was over a decade ago. . . ) the clerk demanded my name, address, phone, and email, for a 99-cent battery.
I told him “no”. He said he wouldn’t sell it to me, unless I gave him the information. So I walked out. The guy chased me, demanding I come back and complete the purchase.
Several months later, the store closed. It was not a surprise to anyone, other than perhaps the store’s employees. . .
I hate malls, I’ll be glad to see them on the ash heap of history. Haven’t been to a closed-in mall in years.
I would always anxiously await their latest shortwave radios back in the day, still have my DX-440 that I've had for the last 20+ years.
I’m wondering if there won’t be a market for showrooms so people can touch products before ordering. Would have to be paid for by rental of space from the equipment manufacturers for displays.
Some of the dumbest and rudest people I've ever met were in RS. It's almost like you have to be Mideastern with a cab driver mentality to work there.
Best buy - good riddance
After that mozlum thing on their Thanksgiving flyer, BB is dead to me.
Worked at RS once as a youngster. Tough to make sales quotas selling stereos to old people who only come in for their free battery (RS had a batter/month card).....
Da gangsta’s took over a mall here and it died totally within a year or two. It is now a big, empty lot. (Southwick in Toledo)
The surviving mall has taken steps to prevent gangsta groups from having the same effect, but you still see 5 or six droop-drawered a’holes walking ABREAST against the flow, daring you to do something about it.
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