Looks like Circuit E36 M3ty is finally done.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/retail/circuit-city-liquidate-remaining-stores/ Stock was trading at three cents this morning. I knew they were going down when they outsourced their IT to India, then fired all their IT employees and offered to hire a few back at lower pay. Great idea if you're a EVP and can get a bonus for "saving all that money," but it will kill a company, guar-an-teed. They just leave that part out of the discussion in Bidness Skool and the journals. I hope those shiny happy people got zip for parachutes. Of course, they'll probably be running a company we work for shortly, seeing as how they all have great resumes now with lots of experience. As Rush said today, only with The Left is failure considered a job qualification. And it seems like the higher up the failure, the more qualified to run another company.

Well, on the bright side.....We can get some goodies at a decent price soon.

Couldn't you have gotten that in there without the floundering? I mean...you were doing pretty darn good until that last sentence ;)

Anyway, buy low sell high, that's my motto!

Clem

Grtechguy wrote: Well, on the bright side.....We can get some goodies at a decent price soon.

Not a chance... they're selling out to a liquidator, so that TV you could buy for $499 last week will be sold at 60% OFF HUGE SALE for $550

Hurry! Hurry! Hurry! Saturday only! At the (______) Convention Center!!! Flat Screen TV's Two Dollars!!! DVD Players, We Pay You To Haul Off!!! (ultrafine print/fast quiet voice: some quantities limited).

Stock price is around 4 cents right now, Clem. I'd say that was over priced. Remember that big long distance phone company that went under a couple years ago. Stock was at a penney or two, then went to zero. A thousand shares for a few bucks got you nothing.

And, like the article said, watch the price at the store because there's a history of jacking it up and calling it a "sale." Humm, I wonder if that had anything to do with their going bankrupt? Naw, it was all Bush's fault.

I heard that the guy from Mexico who ran Comp USA into the ground was going to buy Circuit City.

I should have put my [homersimpson]...[/homersimpson] tags around that "buy low sell high" quote. I can't take credit for his financial wisdom.

:D

All in fun!
Clem

Hey, Snowdawg, see, that fits right in with what Rush was saying. The proven ability to destroy a company means they let you do the same thing to another company. It's like the Gomez Addams School of Business. And we wonder why our economy is having "issues" right now.

Dr. Hess wrote: Hey, Snowdawg, see, that fits right in with what Rush was saying. The proven ability to destroy a company means they let you do the same thing to another company. It's like the Gomez Addams School of Business. And we wonder why our economy is having "issues" right now.

Makes you wonder what Nardelli is going to do after Chrysler goes in the tank. Anybody else need a new CEO with lots of experience.

Dr. Hess wrote: As Rush said today, only with The Left is failure considered a job qualification. And it seems like the higher up the failure, the more qualified to run another company.

Was that Bobby Rush? Cause I'm sure not going to listen to anything that bloated windbag Limbaugh has to say. Unless he has found a way to bribe doctors into breaking the law to support an illegal drug habit. Oh yeah....

Bush doesn't deserve all the credit, or fault for our plight.
Of course he had quite a record of failure up until he became gov. I guess hypocrisy is fine for Rush and his "Ditto Heads" though.

Sorry......Rush annoys me to no end......that's probably why I listen to him.....he is an entertainer, not a journalist.

Dr. Hess wrote: As Rush said today, only with The Left is failure considered a job qualification. And it seems like the higher up the failure, the more qualified to run another company.

So you're saying CEOs, in general, are leftists?

So...you could add one line item to that "Southpark" action plan that's floating around (with underpants and profit):

Phase 1: collect underpants.
Phase 2: ???
Phase 2a: Fail Miserably
Phase 3: Profit

Clem

Yeah, Clem, except Phase 3 is "Personally Profit from huge salary and parachute" and Phase 4 is Start Over with a different company. Maybe Undershirts because you destroyed the Underpants industry and it's now all done in China.

Did I mention that they paid 2 million dollars to fire the head of HR (on the job for 1.5 years) where I work? No reason, just, we don't want you here anymore, parting of ways, bye and here's 2 mil. Oh, and the company is broke and could have used that 2 mil to make a production line profitable instead of losing money on every widget out the door.

Gameboy, I dunno about your little island, but look at where The O, here on our big continent got his money from and where the D's get their money from. Soros, HP, banks and anyone currently getting billions in bailout money, etc. The current crop of R's are right behind them.

Joe Gearin wrote: Was that Bobby Rush?...

No, I think he means he was listening to Moving Pictures and Getty Lee's voice caused him to spontaneously create political alignment based economic theory in his head.

Dr. Hess wrote: Gameboy, I dunno about your little island, but look at where The O, here on our big continent got his money from and where the D's get their money from. Soros, HP, banks and anyone currently getting billions in bailout money, etc. The current crop of R's are right behind them.

AFAIK it mainly came from small (low-4-digit) donations from private individuals, but maybe I'm not reading the right blogs

aircooled wrote:

Joe Gearin wrote: Was that Bobby Rush?...

No, I think he means he was listening to Moving Pictures and Getty Lee's voice caused him to spontaneously create political alignment based economic theory in his head.

That's happened to me before. Lee's voice will do that to you.

Dr. Hess wrote: As Rush said today, only with The Left is failure considered a job qualification. And it seems like the higher up the failure, the more qualified to run another company.

How many company's and sports teams did your main man George W run into the ground before he was elected President?

I live in Richmond, Va. CC home headquarters. The g/f was in their HR dept. Was until today that is. She saw the writing on the wall and moved on. Today, sale or no sale, was her last day. We're fortunate as we won't be affected.

CC did earn this imho. Politics had nothing to do with it. Believe me, in Richmond there are a lot of "The Right" running companies into the ground. It's a conservative town.

What did do CC in was management being completely blind to the market while having an entirely too high opinion of their ability to manage a company. The company needed a head transplant about two years ago. Notice how hard Carmax worked to get out from under the CC corporate umbrella? Yeah, CC started Carmax back when smart guys were running the company. They also bet on DIVX, a CC invention, which wasn't quite as smart.

I also had some connections in the Finance Dept. Some of my closest friends worked on the layoff that occurred last year. The one where they fired their most senior sales staff because they were earning too much. Best Buy did the same thing, capping sales floor salaries at some arbitrary amt. It was a terrible mistake. What CC had, until that moment, was quite possibly the best trained sales force in the market. Granted, it was in poorly designed and run stores but the sales force at least knew about the difference between Sony and Panasonic.

Another failure I can mention is how the old heads, the guys and gals who worked their way up during CC's rise to power, were run out by the new and "with it" management types who had never sold so much as a AA battery. It was known in the company that the old heads were being pushed out in favor of the new guys. A quite big mistake in hindsight. Corporate "yes" men taking over for seasoned veterans.

Their last CEO, Jim Marcum, has done a tremendous job with the shambles he was handed. He helped shove out Phil Schoonover who ran CC into the ground and then refused to step aside while the ship burned and then sank under his stewardship. This blog nominates Phil as the worst CEO of 2008. If Marcum had been installed even a year ago they might still be able to soldier on.

As much as anyone would like to see a conspiracy theory involving politics it just ain't there. Rush is a classic dumb arse who can't help but spin anything into Republican fantasy. In this case it's sad as people are losing their jobs after working hard for years, all through no fault of their own. I think that transcends any fat arsehole trying to capitalize on their loss to make political hay. It amazes me how otherwise intelligent people still follow that fat drug addict and hang on his every ignorant word.

I have always had better service at the local CC over BB, but the best customer service I have experienced was through Tweeter (which has also closed their Chucktown stores). It's probably a local thing.

Regardless, CC pretty much invented the big box electronics store, before that you were pretty much stuck with a department in Sears or Kmart. It's kinda sad to see them go down like that.

Hey, ignorant: how many private sector jobs or businesses has YOUR boy even TRIED to run? All he's ever done is go to school, play litigator for six years and then suck at the public teat. Yeah, I know: flounder!!!!!

Xceler8x, what happened with the outsourcing of IT? When I heard that, I knew CC was all done. It isn't necessarily the outsourcing that kills them, but the problem is that any corporate leadership so stoopid as to think that outsourcing IT is a GOOD idea will surely screw up everything they touch. I see it as an indicator.

Rush was pointing fingers at The Left for promoting failure, using current O appointees as an example. I see the business world working the same way at the top levels.

I remember that maybe five years ago, CC got rid of sales commission for their salesmen. That seems like a sure-fire way to have staff only care just enough to keep a job.

Dr. Hess wrote: Xceler8x, what happened with the outsourcing of IT? When I heard that, I knew CC was all done. It isn't necessarily the outsourcing that kills them, but the problem is that any corporate leadership so stoopid as to think that outsourcing IT is a GOOD idea will surely screw up everything they touch. I see it as an indicator. Rush was pointing fingers at The Left for promoting failure, using current O appointees as an example. I see the business world working the same way at the top levels.

Hess, I'm an I.T. guy too. I know how outsourcing is a complete failure through and through. The bean counters used to love the idea until they had to actually get results out of an off shore'ed team. It was at that point they saw any projected cost savings vanish.

They've since argued that a call center can go over seas as "hey! Call centers are FULL of people who don't know much but how to answer a phone right?" Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. I worked on a helpdesk for two years after college. A script will only take some poor guy but so far in solving anyone's problem.

In a sentence...I completely agree with you that off-shoring is not the silver bullet to saving money.

Did CC deserve to die because they off-shored their I.T.? No. They had A LOT of IBM staff, as well as many other local I.T. firms, contractors on site. They learned too late that like many other companies such as dell, hp, etc that off-shoring sucked in other ways. Don't get me wrong. There are smart guys everywhere. I sometimes think they all moved here.

But hey, Don't let facts get in the way of Rush getting his sound bite in. But that's how he can afford to bribe doctors for vicodin and I'm stuck at home drinkin budweiser and arguing with you on the internet right? Maybe it really is a question of talent. Rush has it and I don't. Back to my budweiser I guess. You want one?

..and The Left...

Bush isn't exactly a ringing endorsement of success is he? We've hashed that argument out to death. I'd say any Republican talking about failure should seek enlightenment by looking within. The Republican party still has a chance of appealing to someone like me and many others. They'll find a new way to survive.

Course, Democrat's are having a party on their own right? Hell, Pelosi couldn't even use a majority in Congress to reign in one spoiled frat boy! She's not a ringing endorsement for assertive leadership!

I apologize for coming off so harsh. This CC thing is pretty close to home. Didn't mean to make things so black and white or insult anyone. It's not black and white and no one deserves to be insulted. I even boycotted CC after they let go of all of those sales people. It just wasn't right. Especially when they're failure of a CEO was pulling down 2+ mill a year! I was rooting for them once they had someone in the top spot who seemed to have avoided signing a contract with Satan to retain his golden parachute. Jim Marcum was the real deal. If you research his career you'll see he's done a good job of saving companies who were circling the drain. I wish he had a better chance at this one. With a stronger financial environment I think he could've done it.

MitchellC wrote: I remember that maybe five years ago, CC got rid of sales commission for their salesmen. That seems like a sure-fire way to have staff only care just enough to keep a job.

It does seem counter intuitive. At the time that was done all sales staff were commissioned. Going to CC was like walking on a used car lot. You'd cruise in to check out the latest Atari game and a sales guy would be all over you about the latest Betamax player. I mean it was like stepping into the shark tank ya know!

So they axed commission to try to emulate Best Buy's experience.

I agree with you as I sold on commission in college. It really drove some of my sales guys to perform. I managed a luggage shop named Bentley's at the time.

Answering that question is bit like holding on to an eel. Once you think you have a good grip on it the d@mned thing slips out. Then, you're back to wrestling with it again. Just when you thought you were done.

Do you retain commission to keep sales numbers up and therefore alienating potential customers? Do you remove commission to make the store more welcoming to the casual shopper knowing that your sales guys may be less motivated?

Budweiser gives me a migrane. You wanna Heineken or a Hesselbrau?

As I said, the outsourcing is an indicator of failed upper management. They will screw up other areas too, like screwing their sales staff. Yeah, there's a bright idea. Let's screw the sales staff. We'll be sure to sell more stuff that way.

Bush isn't perfect. He showed some serious leadership flaws in not biatchslapping the D's and their media early on. Rush, while entertaining, has serious issues as well. His defense of oil company profits is just too much. He's a much a part of The Machine as the rest of Washington, just a little more open about some things.

ignorant wrote:

Dr. Hess wrote: As Rush said today, only with The Left is failure considered a job qualification. And it seems like the higher up the failure, the more qualified to run another company.

How many company's and sports teams did your main man George W run into the ground before he was elected President?

Can't really blame him for the A-Rod thing. The Rangers seem to be in the tank even without him.