No second life for Circuit City?
“It’s like a jungle, sometimes it makes me wonder how I keep from going under.” Grandmaster Flash – “The Message”
Oh Circuit City – we’ll surely miss you. Well, we might not miss your insistence on trying to sell hdtvs by splitting the signal 423 ways and displaying SD content on them, or demoing surround sound systems by bunching all the speakers together at different heights and directions. But, those are just minor things ignoring the unique selling points of your big box items. It’s nothing that other major electronics retailers don’t do; albeit, never as cack-handedly as you guys.
Personally, I’ll particularly miss the staff. A trip to Circuit City felt like the entire store had been taken over by the local high school on work experience. This led to the place having a certain quirky charm. It never felt quite as Machiavellian as your average Best Buy.
Very few trips to Circuit City have passed without incident, caused mainly by the loyal band of merry boys and girls that fluff their day away pretending to be sales reps.
I’ve been flirted with in Steubenville in an overtly gay manner by an audio/visual sales guy who was particularly fond of my accent and tried to make sure I was alright in every single department I walked through.
Then there was a time I was looking at center speakers for a surround sound set up and was ushered over to listen to a Polk they had set up over in a corner. It would’ve been more than impolite to simply walk away as the chap had to rewire a receiver in order to get everything plugged in right before astonishing me with its sonic prowess. What a shame my demonstration was hijacked by another sales rep who slipped in his ‘client’s’ home movie DVD that he’d just taken from the back of his boat that afternoon of his son water-skiing just so he could sell him some connector cables.
You really have no idea how well the wind buffeting a camcorder’s microphone highlights the low-end harrumph of a Polk Audio CS245i. And the less said about the father the better.
So, it was with these fond memories that I was magnetically drawn to Circuit City again last night along with hoards of others as signs wafting in the wind pronounced 30% off the entire store. I’m as big a fool as anybody, perhaps more so considering the number of blog posts doing the rounds indicating that Circuit City were currently marking down from MSRPs and things were more than on their Website or what they were previously in store.
And I have to say they’re right. WORST. SALE. EVER.
But that wasn’t enough to stop me stumping up for a wireless-n router, which I knew I could get for $5-15 cheaper online even at 20% off in-store. Even as I was looking, the store hand was busily adjusting prices. I was most confused by there being two of the routers I was looking at going for $103.99 with the identical router proudly being sold for $108.15 on the shelf below it. After adjustments he brought it down to $105.45. Priceless.
If only I had the bare-faced cheek to ask for a price match.
Plenty has been made of why Circuit City is going to the wall, but the fact that they simply couldn’t fathom the basics that you, I, or a trained rhesus monkey would’ve made sure were adhered to is neither here nor there. Just go for a mosey round Google News if you want the latest lowdown and fallout.
But their folly wasn’t just isolated to their offline presence; they were a tad shabby online, too. Well, it was either shabbiness or a nice little PPC jape.
The other night while I was researching TVs online for my father-in-law I came across another example of Circuit City quirkiness. I’m of the opinion if you can’t find something online for at least 20% cheaper then you’re not worth squat. For example, today I should be receiving a 100ft Ethernet cable and three 10ft hdmi cables for the princely sum of $28.99 – just try getting that lot from your usual suspects for less than $150.00.
Anyway, while I was looking around for TVs, and a particular model of Samsung, I noticed a PPC ad with the rather poor title of “750 for sale” – it was remotely related to the search I suppose. All things considered, and with the vain hope of them having done something sale-like during their sale I clicked on it.
Oh how I tittered as the landing page it took me was for a surge protector.
In their last throes, Circuit City couldn’t help but try to up-sell.
Seriously, how much writing is there on their boardroom walls and how long have they been doodling?
This article has 2 responses
I was on the opening team for Circuit City store 800 on Wrighstboro Road over 22 years ago. I have been wandering through the store almost every day for the past couple of weeks, looking for product and fixtures for my own retail business and talking with the employees of store 800. As I walked through the offices and looked at probably the same desks I sat at 20 years ago, I realized that the cash office was still called the cash office, that the PSB (Product Summary Book) was still called the PSB and still contained the “A” and “B” price. The jackets, ties and sales binders are gone, but the culture has not changed at all and to the testament of the hard working associates and management team, it will last to the very end.
For 60 years Circuit City was our consumer electronics store of choice. I am sick and tired of hearing people complain about “lousy bargains” and “rumpled salespeople”. These employees are honest hardworking Americans in one of the hardest, most stressful professions of all-a consumer electronics retail environment. 34,000 of them are about to be out of a job. I think most of them will be snaped up, even in this tragic economy, because Circuit City training was the best in the world. I was a sales associate, I was a sales manager, I was on the training team, I spent time in Richmond VA at the home store and I can tell you that as far as retail goes, Circuit City was an icon of customer service.
Circuit City was undone by the very thing it sold-technology. In actuallity, it was a combination of the internet and anxious customers who prized price over service and a hat trick by Best Buy that weakened the Circuit. A terrible economy has unplugged it forever.
If you want service now, you are most likely out of luck. When I was a sales manager, we were told to do whatever it took to make the customer happy and we did. Our associates made good money and our customers were happy. Our buyers were very smart and our product traning was astoundingly good especially considering the wide range of products we stocked.
All of the experiences of my life have helped me to be successful in my own business, but none of those experiences comes even close in value as the three years I spent with Circuit City. Without my training at Circuit City, I could not have possibly survived 14 years in the retail computer business. Since we opened in 1995, every single one of the competitors in this market have gone away. Not one is left that was open when we opened-except Circuit City and in three days it too will be gone. I wish it were not so.
As we charted our metrics dashboard today with Steve Fortunato our advisor from GA Tech the numbers looked good. As we planned our next strategic meeting to talk about inventory levels, I realized that the suggested inventory levels (3 weeks of average sales) was a Circuit City standard number. As I think on it, many, many of my decisions as President of my own small company are guided by my training at Circuit City, from HR issues to inventory, to sales strategy and competitive tenaciousness. But the overarching message pounded into me an every Circuit City Employee since probably the very beginning was to make the customer happy at almost any cost and to know your product like no one else.
I was taught by Circuit to “ctc” (cruh the competition) by actually shopping other stores and writing down the prices and promotions… it was part of my job. As owner of my own business, I was not quite as aggressive, but always remembed to keep an eye on my competition. If anyone did pick a fight like the time the mighty “Computer Renaisance” marketing director walked into my store and threw his sales flyer on my counter announcing he was going to put me out of business, I usually just ignored them.
I learned not to disparage anyone, anywhere, anytime, not the competition, not an inferior product, not a person or thing. I was taught to fight fair and present facts as facts and opinions as opinions. I was taught to know my product inside and out, to treat people like people and employees like family.
I worked with great people like Mike Trotter, Mark Atchison, Jeff D, and the legendary Bill McKinley, who also owns his own retail store, Wireless Solutions in the Augusta Market. I considere myself proud to have beaten him just once in sheer retail monthly sales volume. Ask Bill McKinley what he learned at Circuit City and he will tell you the same thing I will. We learned a lot of very important things about how to technically execute an efficient retail business, but most importantly we were encouraged do the right thing for your customer, be honest, earn their trust and work very, very hard.
I wish I had some employment openings in my retail stores now, because these employees at store 800 in Augusta,Ga represent the best in the business. They were carefully screened, re-screened, interviewed and re-inteviewed, then trained and re-trained by an organization that has a culture of customer service and incredible hard work. Well done employees that make up store 800. Well done to all of the Circuit City employees, past and present. Well done.