Circuit City Closings A Ho-Hum Event At Best

If you hadn’t heard there are 155 Circuit City stores that will be closing. Is the one near you getting the axe? Here’s the list.

Everybody else is blogging about this so I figured I’d chime in my 2 cents on the matter.

Firstly, this is not indicative Circuit City is going out of business. It just means they’re cutting the chaff from the wheat, so to speak. For example, none of the stores in the Tampa Bay area of Florida (where PCMech is based) are being closed.

Second, I can guarantee you that the ones being closed were the equivalent of ghost towns. This is a very common scenario in the United States concerning free-standing "brick and mortar" stores that simply don’t capture the market they’re in.

I’ll put it to you this way: If you really want to see commerce failing, read Dead Malls. There have been lots of free-standers that have either gone completely out of business or got acquired and were integrated into a larger business model or scrapped.

Some examples:

Service Merchandise (resurrected as an online-only retailer)
Bradlees
Caldor
Lechmere
Zayres

..and there are plenty others. All gone.

I also seem to remember that not-so long ago CompUSA was on death row, but it’s not gone either. It seems TigerDirect had some good influence and this chain will be sticking around for a while yet.

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http://www.twitter.com/andrewpearce Drew
From my understanding, the decision as to which stores were to be closed was based mainly on those with lower sales figures along with the high cost of leasing. Many stores were unable to renegotiate a lease agreement at a reduced rate compared to what they were paying.
Under performing stores was the number one reason from what I hear though.
Even though I’m obviously not ‘pro’ Circuit City, it’s still not easy to see companies downsizing and closing down 20% of their stores due to the economy and their stock value. It’s hard on everyone, especially their employees (which I feel sorry for the most)
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