It’s nice when people above you leave for good reasons. Among the many reasons I left law enforcement was that I jumped to number 3 in my department, but there was no indication that #2 was going anywhere, and the chief already indicated he intended to stay another 10 years. I was against a wall, so it was time to route around the obstacle.
]]>Regarding music stores, YouTube serves that function for me nowadays. But I haven’t come up with a substitute for browsing books at the book store. Luckily we have plenty of Barnes & Noble stores locally… for now :(.
]]>Everyone has cut back on inventory selection, except Ace Hardware, which uses the philosophy of a few of a lot of different items, rather than a lot of the same item.
I miss the book stores and music stores, as I always enjoyed browsing.
]]>As a Jeeper and a backpacker I do support plenty of small businesses though. For example, I’m about to order some rock rails. Over the Internet. From a pair of brothers who run a machine shop in Houston and sell offroad accessories as a sideline (thus why it’ll probably be a two month wait for the rails, because their 4×4 work has to be fit in between the jobs for the oil companies that pay the bills). My tent came from a guy who lives in the Sierra Nevada who contracts out the sewing to a small company in Oregon. My backpack came from a small company in Texas that, alas, does contract out much of their sewing to China in order to make their packs affordable, but does contract some of it to that same small outfit in Oregon. All of this was purchased over the Internet. For the small business person who is ‘Net savvy, the Internet is a boon, not a bane. Just sayin’.
– Badtux the Business Penguin
]]>The various ‘Dollar’ stores are supposed to be the replacement for the ‘five and dimes’, another creation of Woolworths, but it isn’t the same, because they don’t consistently carry the same products. ‘Notions’ were what you always bought at Woolworths – the little stuff that no one else seemed to carry.
The way retailers have been acting, they are forcing people to buy on the ‘Net. I have increased my on-line shopping because I just can’t buy things locally. Fortunately there is still an Ace Hardware in town, or I would have to wait to fix anything around here.
KMart starting following WalMart’s lead, and that was a major mistake. They just couldn’t leave well enough alone, and serve their customers. Sears tried to move upscale, and annoyed their customer base. As you say, Badtux, Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances were their strength, and they diluted it with a lot of space wasted on things that Sears core customers didn’t want to buy.
Sears should have been the first major store on the ‘Net, but they blew it. Their catalog sales were a natural fit with on-line shopping, but they spun off the catalog sales.
Jams, don’t look for a record store in the US outside of a major city, they are all gone, have surrendered to WalMart and the ‘Net. WalMart apparently only carries the ClearChannel play list, so you are forced to go to the ‘Net.
]]>Ooohhh, yes. There was a Woolworth’s on a major intersection in downtown Houston when I was a child. Mostly my family bought shoes there; they had about the least expensive decent quality shoes for a few years back then. I don’t know what occupies that real estate now, but it must be more profitable than retail, because whatever it is, is in the very heart of downtown. Best guess: a headquarters for a major “awl bidness.”
]]>As for K-Mart… just decades of mismanagement. Bad inventory control, bad purchasing, bad store maintenance, bad everything. The amazing part was that they managed to sucker Sears into merging with them. It’d be as if American Motors Corporation had suckered Chrysler into merging with them in 1988 and put AMC in charge of Chrysler, rather than the other way around… a “huh? Wha?!” moment.
— Badtux the Business Penguin
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