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…
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.
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.
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.
TIL, thanks!
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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).
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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“Fun” fact: Bain Capital killed both TRU and KayBee Toys.
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.
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?
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.
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
…What else of ours have you got?
Some empires that ought to fall… google, facebook, microsoft
I miss Fry’s Electronics Stores
I miss early 2000s Fry’s Electronics. Back when they still cared.
Even 2010s Fry’s was a shit show. They always sold out if the ad special of the week. They had random out of stocks that took up huge chunks of the aisles, with a lot of old, undesirable stuff left over. And then they’d give you a hard time with returns.
End stage Fry’s was so weird it could have been a Terry Gilliam movie or something. Vast expanses of mostly empty aisles with the few bits of leftover inventory still there, but interspersed with filled-up cages of AliExpress junk at 10x the AE price or 3x the “get it tomorrow” Amazon price. Then there would be one or two areas where the vendors had gone along with their cockamamie “we’ll sell your shit on consignment!” scam, and a few sad employees trying to avoid making eye contact.
Yet Microcenter endures.
At least I can generally go into Microcenter and they’ll have what I need.
The one in Burbank, CA was awesome. It was done in a 1950s sci-fi movie theme. The outside was made to look like a UFO crashed into it.
And an Alice in Wonderland themed one in the valley
We still have one in Illinois but I’m not sure how it’s still holding on. Used to love going in there. Loads of specialized parts and equipment as well as staff that were super knowledgeable and helpful. But at least we have Microcenter now… Which is like if you took a Fry’s and scaled it down and made it work more like a car dealership 😭😭😭
I was just gonna say. So many good memories with my dad going to Fry’s. The sole reason i went HARD into techie stuff
Last time I went to one (2020), the shelves were 80% empty, and what they had was mostly karaoke machines on consignment sale.
It was super depressing.
Look up on my works ye mighty and despair
What’s the one on the bottom right?
wow that’s a terrible logo
Circuit City IIRC
There is a Toys R Us a few blocks away from me that I used to go to as a kid and it’s wild to me that only in the last year has anything been done to it and all that was done is someone erected a chain link fence around the property to keep people out because it was pretty popular for hooking up and selling drugs given in its in a sparsely populated area and has absolutely no lights around. Like it still has the sign and shit, the building has just sat completely abandoned for over a decade since TRU went bankrupt.
We had Blockbusters and Circuit City and even a Mervyn’s here. The buildings have all been re-used though. Just the TRU and the Orchard Supply next to it have sat unchanged over the years, like ruined relics of the past.
