Bankrupt electronics retailer Circuit City Inc. said Friday it has asked for court approval to close its remaining 567 U.S. stores and sell all its merchandise.
The company said it has 30,000 employees.
“We are extremely disappointed by this outcome,” James Marcum, acting CEO for Circuit City, said in a statement. “We were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company.”
From Wikipedia:
In 1949, Samuel S. Wurtzel opened the first Wards Company retail store in Richmond, Virginia, at 705 West Broad Street. By 1959 Wards operated four television and home appliance stores in Richmond. The company continued to grow… During the 1970s and early 1980s it also sold mail-order under the name Dixie Hifi, advertising in the hifi magazines of the day.
Also opening the eleventh chapter: Black Angus Steakhouse (founded in 1964 by Stuart Anderson of Seattle) and—holy shit—the Minneapolis Star Tribune:
The Star Tribune, saddled with high debt and a sharp decline in print advertising, filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition Thursday night.
Minnesota’s largest newspaper will try to use bankruptcy to restructure its debt and lower its labor costs.
Chris Harte, the paper’s publisher, said the filing would have no impact on home delivery, advertising, newsgathering or any other aspects of the paper’s operations.
They’re dropping like flies. Gigantic, top-heavy, family-friendly flies.
Portals are just not viable anymore, even retail portals.
You see it on the Internet…toll takers that stand between content and readers, or retailers that stand between customer and factory.
They are just not needed any more…
Take that debt fueled consumerism dependent shelf space!
I’m not surprised about the Strib. It’s become a very shitty paper in the past 10 years.
I always wanted to like Circuit City. They often had better prices on CDs (Remember those?) and computer-related items, but the whole hard-sell approach was a real turn-off; way worse than Best Buy’s. Both chains are inconsistent in diversity of what they have in stock across the board. The small Best Buy stores are essentially worthless unless you want the same hot-ticket item everyone else does. I view them as a necessary evil now, good for instant gratification as long as the sale price is decent.
Black Anus is closing?! NOOOOOO!!
They were all over my pre-pubescent fag sensibilities circa the early 70’s: pitch-black dining rooms with booths constructed of edge-lit glowing-pink lucite panels and orange Naugahyde upholstery.
No fucking clue what they look like these days.