Does anyone even remember Circuit City?

[1995hoo]

I have a feeling a lot of people know of the Wiz because of that Seinfeld episode.

[dvferyance]

I do they were in the Milwaukee market from 1995 until their closure in 2009. The one store I was sad to see go.

[hbelkins]

Yes, and I bought a few things from them. Prices were competitive for my market (Lexington, Ky.) and I think they were pretty much gone from Lexington by the time Best Buy came to town (1994-95; many of my dates with my now-wife consisted of looking through Best Buy's CD selection because they carried lots of imports and hard-to-find stuff back then.)

[kkt]

Their biggest undoing was getting rid of their full time employees and going with nearly a full staff of part-timers.  Not only were they less experienced and less knowledgeable, the public didn't appreciate what the store had done to their employees.  It was a massive fatal blow that they never recovered from.

Oh, is that what they did?  I do remember Circuit City and I remember the transition from usually getting helpful staff to usually getting help who didn't know anything but what was printed on the box.  I didn't know until now that it was a deliberate policy.

[inkyatari]

I loved Circuit City.  Now the one I used to go to turned into the horrid HH Gregg.  Blech.

[slorydn1]

I am struggling to remember if I had ever even stepped foot in a Circuit City. When I was growing up Service Merchandise and the various department stores (or Kmart) had everything I was looking for electronically.

After I moved here as an adult, I did most of my shopping Radio Shack (we had 2 less than a mile apart) or Best Buy.

[renegade]

The Wiz used to advertise a ton in the Detroit market back in the 1980s.

I have lived here my entire life.  I don't remember The Wiz ever being around here.
I remember Highland Appliance and Fretter's, but not The Wiz.

[SP Cook]

Huntington had a Circuit City as an out-parcel from the mall.  Then they built a larger place next door.  The original is now a Chinese restaurant and the second one is an Ollie's Army Outlet.  The garage area of both (used to install car stereos) sits empty.    Charleston had one, which was in a very non-retail place downtown.  Still sits empty.

Rant:  re: The Wiz.  The chain was mostly NYC metro.  Late in life it tried expanding down the east coast as far as Baltimore and sold the name in Canada to an outfit in metro Montreal.  Yet, the media, as it does with any NYC thing, assumed that the whole world gets the reference.    NYC thing, the other two media centers (LA and DC) never do that.  I was reading a business magazine the other day and it called Kroger (the nation's largest grocery, which does business pretty much everywhere but the northeast) a "regional grocery chain".  The same publication would list a business in NY metro w/o any reference to its line of business nor its footprint.

[Max Rockatansky]

The Wiz used to advertise a ton in the Detroit market back in the 1980s.

I have lived here my entire life.  I don't remember The Wiz ever being around here.
I remember Highland Appliance and Fretter's, but not The Wiz.

I could be mixing some of what I remember from Detroit and Danbury, CT together.  When I was a kid my family moved from Detroit to Connecticut and back to Lansing a relatively short time frame. 

[capt.ron]

I remember Circuit City when they opened in North Little Rock. I liked it better than Best Buy since most of their electronics catered more to a  high end crowd. What killed the NLR location was its location, aside from the after-mentioned mis-management (bad corporate decisions, et al)

[renegade]

The Wiz used to advertise a ton in the Detroit market back in the 1980s.

I have lived here my entire life.  I don't remember The Wiz ever being around here.
I remember Highland Appliance and Fretter's, but not The Wiz.

I could be mixing some of what I remember from Detroit and Danbury, CT together.  When I was a kid my family moved from Detroit to Connecticut and back to Lansing a relatively short time frame.

It all makes sense, then.

[hbelkins]

Service Merchandise

Loved that store, and bought quite a few things from them over the years (including my wife's engagement ring.)

Another "catalog showroom store" we visited often in both Lexington and Louisville was O.G. Wilson's.

[OracleUsr]

Bought my first component receiver and DVD player there, and I think my father bought me my first computer (a VIC-20) back in 1982 from there.

I remember in fact them demonstrating the Mattel Intellivision system with the voice module, and when you hit the reset button, it would say "Welcome to...B17  BOMBER" (and B17 BOMBER was said in the goofiest voice I had ever heard)

BEEEEE SEVENTEEN BAULMER?

Yeah, that's it. 

[thenetwork]

Circuit City was to Target as Best Buy was to Walmart.  Best Buy was/is a noisy store with employees asking to assist in every department, while Circuit City was more laid back, and as I recall was very conservative when it came to noise or blaring music on the overhead speakers -- most of the A/V noise was situated in multiple "rooms" you would enter to experience the sound.

I think I bought an equal amount of stuff between the two back in the day, even though Best Buy had a bigger selection of CDs & DVDs and a slightly lower price.

IIRC, on the west side of Cleveland, both had entered the market about the same time, but I think Best Buy got the better jump on primo locations.

[roadman65]

When I moved down to Orlando from Central Jersey we did not have the Wiz and PC Richard & Sons, so Circuit City was the place.  I thought it was Florida's version of them until Circuit City went nationwide and did open in NJ later on.

I used to like them and its a shame they are now gone.  So are the Wiz, but heard PC is still operating all over NJ.

[kphoger]

I worked a temp job at a Circuit City distribution center in southern Illinois for a couple of weeks.  We had to remove our shoes and be scanned at the gate before going to work.  Cell phones had to be kept in our lockers.  Truck deliveries (which I actually did regularly at my next job) and pick-ups had the drivers wait in a fenced-in cage just inside the door.  This was all in effort to prevent people from planning how to steal and smuggle newly released products out of the DC.  During the short time I was there, a guy was caught trying to sneak a PS3 out.  This was in late May or early June of 2006, five months or so before release date.  That didn't end well for the employee.

My job there, by the way, was loading 48-foot trailers piece by piece, floor to ceiling.  They would come down a huge motorized conveyor system, then down a gravity conveyor into the trailer.  The huge furniture and home theater TV sets were fork-lifted on ahead of time, and all we had to do with those was nudge them over a bit.  Everything else, from cameras to televisions, was stacked piece by piece.  Flinging televisions over your head apparently isn't very good for your tendons, as I ended up wearing a wrist brace for a couple of months, and it still flares up if I play guitar for too long.

[hbelkins]

Circuit City was to Target as Best Buy was to Walmart.  Best Buy was/is a noisy store with employees asking to assist in every department...

Where have you found a Walmart where employees are seeking to provide that much assistance? 

[doorknob60]

Circuit City was to Target as Best Buy was to Walmart.  Best Buy was/is a noisy store with employees asking to assist in every department...

Where have you found a Walmart where employees are seeking to provide that much assistance? 

Hah, whenever I go to Walmart and need to find somebody (like to get a video game out of the case), I have to wander around for 5 minutes to find anyone at all. Especially if I go after like 8 PM (which is usually when I go).

[Big John]

I sure do. I was almost 14 years old when Circuit City went under. I had a Circuit City near me in Bel Air, Maryland (which is a Baltimore suburb). It was eventually converted into an HHGregg, and now the HHGregg is about to close too!

All remaining HH Gregg stores to close: http://wjhl.com/2017/04/07/hhgregg-to-shut-down-begin-liquidation-process-on-saturday/

[Brandon]

I sure do. I was almost 14 years old when Circuit City went under. I had a Circuit City near me in Bel Air, Maryland (which is a Baltimore suburb). It was eventually converted into an HHGregg, and now the HHGregg is about to close too!

All remaining HH Gregg stores to close: http://wjhl.com/2017/04/07/hhgregg-to-shut-down-begin-liquidation-process-on-saturday/

Can't blame the internet for this one.  Who buys appliances online?

[LM117]

No surprise there. I went to HHGregg once in Greensboro, NC in 2012. The store barely had any customers (I might've been the only one) and the employees there couldn't be bothered to help. They were too busy standing around bullshitting with each other. Not to mention that Best Buy had a much better inventory. I left and never set foot in an HHGregg again.

As for Circuit City, I don't remember ever going inside one of their stores, but I do remember seeing one in Greenville, NC when I lived in eastern NC.

[jeffandnicole]

I sure do. I was almost 14 years old when Circuit City went under. I had a Circuit City near me in Bel Air, Maryland (which is a Baltimore suburb). It was eventually converted into an HHGregg, and now the HHGregg is about to close too!

All remaining HH Gregg stores to close: http://wjhl.com/2017/04/07/hhgregg-to-shut-down-begin-liquidation-process-on-saturday/

Can't blame the internet for this one.  Who buys appliances online?

When I got my kitchen redone, while I didn't buy a new microwave, range and dishwasher online, I bought them sight-unseen.  Looking around, the selection at the stores are pitifully small.  We wanted a flattop range, and the various stores have a few models, maybe.  But online, there's a whole lot more available, and with actual reviews, rather than a salesman telling me the obvious.

I eventually saw everything we wanted was available thru Home Depot.  The only reason we didn't buy them online was Home Depot offered a special discounted deal in the store that for some reason I couldn't get online.  But everything else was the same.  Heck, I brought the details with me to the store; the salesperson simply typed them in to the computer and completed the sale.

[1995hoo]

We bought two appliances at the HH Gregg in Springfield that used to be a Circuit City. We were pretty satisfied with them, especially the delivery service. But they simply didn't sell enough products to lure us in on a regular basis. You don't buy appliances or TVs every year (or every other year, at least not most people). I buy stuff with the idea of it lasting.

[The Nature Boy]

We bought two appliances at the HH Gregg in Springfield that used to be a Circuit City. We were pretty satisfied with them, especially the delivery service. But they simply didn't sell enough products to lure us in on a regular basis. You don't buy appliances or TVs every year (or every other year, at least not most people). I buy stuff with the idea of it lasting.

From what I've seen however, it seems that stores and manufacturers caught onto this and have made products less reliable. My family had an old TV that we kept for at least a decade. I can't imagine that being very common anymore.

[SP Cook]

From what I've seen however, it seems that stores and manufacturers caught onto this and have made products less reliable. My family had an old TV that we kept for at least a decade. I can't imagine that being very common anymore.

Well, yes,  But no evil conspiracy is afoot.  How much did a good TV cost in the 70s or 80s?  Index that to inflation, and see how much less expensive a modern flat screen (which has far more capabliliies) really is.  Probably, indexed to inflation, maybe 15% of what it used to cost. 

A TV in the old days was a piece of furniture and expected to last maybe a lifetime.  And it had technician serviceable parts.  A modern TV is almost a wear item for a home and really cannot be repaired in a meaningful way.