Posted on 05/02/2007 5:08:03 AM PDT by Hydroshock
Circuit City fired 3,400 of its highest-paid store employees in March, saying it needed to hire cheaper workers to shore up its bottom line. Now, the Richmond electronics retailer says it expects to post a first-quarter loss next month, and analysts are blaming the job cuts.
The company, which on Monday also revised its outlook for the first half of its fiscal year ending Feb. 29, 2008, cited poor sales of large flat-panel and projection televisions. Analysts said Circuit City had cast off some of its most experienced and successful people and was losing business to competitors who have better-trained employees.
Circuit City expects to report a loss for the first quarter because of poor sales of expensive televisions, which often require experienced salespeople. (By Steve Helber -- Associated Press)
From The Post's Print Edition All of Today's Business Articles Today's Business Front Image
"I think even though sales were soft in March, this is clearly why April sales were worse. They were replaced with less knowledgeable associates," said Tim Allen, an analyst with Jefferies & Co.
In particular, the televisions showing disappointing results are "intensive sales" requiring more informed employees, Allen said. "It's a big-ticket purchase for somebody. And if they feel like they're not getting the right advice or are being misled by someone who doesn't know, it would be definitely frustrating. They will take their business elsewhere."
Circuit City said in March that sales would be volatile for the next several months as the company adjusts to the changes. But yesterday the company said it was too early to tell whether the dismissals had caused any of the falloff in April sales b
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
That's because of a fact that way too many politicians don't understand:
The Government only consumes. It produces nothing. Taxes are a pure, 100% economic loss.
The worst example of this ignorance was the politician--wish I had the name and cite--who said he thought everyone should work for the government!
Didn’t Best Buy fire all of its old employees so they could hire “young geeks” “who know about this technology”?
and the CEO gets a bonus.
Ditto. I’ve walked in there looking to buy a couple of PCs and I got NO help. The employees are all standing around leaning on the tvs watching the music videos. I got blown off by one guy and promptly left the store empty handed.
Ditto. I’ve walked in there looking to buy a couple of PCs and I got NO help. The employees are all standing around leaning on the tvs watching the music videos. I got blown off by one guy and promptly left the store empty handed.
At my last retail job, your salary was based entirely on sales numbers. Supposedly, this was to reward the top salespeople, but in reality things didn’t work that way. Frequently, those top salespeople were not helpful to customers, and would stand around telling everyone walking down the aisle “Let me know when you are ready”. When someone else actually helped that customer and were about to ring them up, the “top” salesperson would suddenly reappear and announce “That’s MY customer” and take the sale. If they did help a customer, they would hound them until the customer got fed up and left everything on the counter. They would also leave their other responsibilities, such as restocking and markdowns, for others to do, no matter how often they were told to get to work. The result was that good, hard working, knowledgeable employees would get pay cuts or quit out of frustration while the “top” salespeople would get rewarded. It wasn’t worth the effort to do a good job, and then get screwed by both management and co-workers. Complaining did no good, because management was not going to fire their “best” people. These “top” salespeople actually hurt business, because customers would frequently leave rather than put up with the fighting and harassment that took place on the sales floor. Of course, sales goals kept increasing, regardless of past performance or factors like a bad economy or crappy merchandise that nobody wanted to buy, so the longer someone stayed there, the harder it was to reach their goals. Eventually everyone would peak out unless they stole sales from other salespeople. I suspect that top management really wanted people to reach a point where they couldn’t get any more raises, or start getting pay cuts, so that they would eventually leave, to be replaced with someone new getting paid several dollars an hour less.
The article sort of implies that sales staff was affected, but it doesn't say they were specifically.
Anyone here remember Scotty’s? In the late 60’s (starting in Florida) it was the first real chain of home building supplies and such for contractors and DIYers. A predecessor of Home Depot.
Great company, employees got stock, they promoted from within. Some managers had started in the warehouse loading trucks. They were going great guns. Later on, they were resting on their laurels and started slipping. A Belgian multi-national bought the chain. Go directly to the toilet. Bean counter accountants took over management. All the merchandising and marketing plans came from somewhere far away and were made by number crunchers. Ran the company right into the ground.
Scotty’s is no more.
Ohter articles stated it was mostly sales staff.
The computer how sits mockingly on a shelf in my office and is never used.
I would advise against anyone buying anything at Circuit City. They simply don’t have a clue about how to provide good customer care and service.
Gosh I miss French ~ and Portuguese ~ and Skolt.
They’re buying Sears?
They were losing their shirts.
At the moment they are unloading that piece of business and refocusing on their retail core.
They’re heavy too, and bet she had to bend over to lay ‘em on the floor ~ or did you blow a circuit or something?
Just 2 days ago my neighbor called Home Depot, where he had bought a front door. The door jamb wasn't wide enough to cover his wall thickness.
Whoever he talked to was oblivious to different thickness walls and made no effort to custom order a door.
Neighbor called Lowe's, the fellow knew exactly what my neighbor needed and special ordered the door.
Most of these sales oriented stores have removed commissions and any incentive for an 'associate' to make a sale.
Today's 'salesperson' simply points a customer toward the correct location and watches that shoplifting doesn't occur.
Better idea: out-source the pointy-haired executives that made this bone-head decision. (It's like something straight out of a Dilbert cartoon!)
It's long been recognized in the software industry that the developers in the top 10% are several times as productive as the average programmer, while their salaries are not several times as high. So you get much better returns by having a small number of very good people than a large number of low-paid drones
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