Circuit City Bites the Dust

By --, Star Tribune
Last update: January 16, 2009 - 10:00 PM

Unable to find a buyer or another way out of bankruptcy, Circuit City Stores, Inc. said Friday it will close its remaining 567 U.S. stores and sell off its inventory. Nine stores and more than 500 employees in Minnesota will be affected, according to the company's financial records.

Circuit City is the second largest consumer electronics retailer behind Richfield-based Best Buy Co. Inc. And in what analyst Jack Murphy of William Blair & Co. described as "one of the largest market-share opportunities in retailing," Best Buy stands to gain substantially from the demise of its closest rival.

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I hate to see Circuit City go. They tried so hard to make it.

Uncle

Yeah, I bought a computer there once. They seemed to know what they were doing. And another domino falls......

No word yet on the Circuit Citys in Canada. So far, they will remain.

They can't compete against Best Buy prices...

I honestly don't know how any retailers make money. With the cost of goods, overhead, and staffing it really baffles me. The same way that guys like Gates and the other Microsoft billionaires made so much money. I believe there is such a reliance on equity and slight of hand in accounting to make wealth that operational cashflow is secondary.

Customer service might help... I've been in circuit city twice to spend money but the service was so bad, I ended up buying at Best Buy....

My daughter won a 50" plasma TV from them. The service was fantastic. I liked Circuit City better when they had appliances. Are we evolving to an all online retail market? Woot.com has eaten Circuit City's breakfast in the US.

Uncle

The Canadian operations will continue as a going concern while being shopped around. The last I heard the Canadian operations weren't doing too badly.

Since they took over Radio Shack I never really checked them out. I should stop by one sometime.

This is round three of the Circuit City financial saga. The proposed reorganizzation being actively worked on still revealed that their built in overhead was a continuing problem and this most recent major downturn in the US economy is just more than they can overcome. In my opinion they finally have come to the conclusion that putting more money into a business that cannot compete with some other big box stores is just futile effort and prolonging the eventual demise. There are more lined up behind them that may just call it quits also. The US economy isn't rebounding as fast as was forecast in the fall of last year.