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CC started going downhill a few years ago, when they eliminated washers, dryers and refrigerators from their stores. These common items increased traffic, even though they were low margin. Now everything is low margin, I think.

Circuit City couldn’t compete with Lowes and Home Depot in selling that type of stuff. You only have a limited amount of space in your store; why take up a significant amount of space with a product that you can’t move?

I never liked Circuit City because lots of the products have the old-fashioned checkout, where it has to be pulled from the back of the store. Annoying. Anyway, it seems like all these electronics store—other than Best Buy—are on their way out, anyhow.

Circuit City needed to take drastic steps to stay in business, so it took a big gamble. I guess it didn’t pay off, but I can’t blame them for trying. That’s the way it goes.

Unless they've changed things, the issue is more to how CC has been treating its employees for over a decade. I worked for CC from 1994 to 1999. Seems like a lifetime ago these days. Anyway, the first year I worked there I sold $xx amount of product during the months of November and December (the average sales person made over 50% of their entire commission in Q4 there). Skip ahead 5 years. Same product, general same price, etc. of all the products. I sold 4 times the amount of the 'right' product I did the first year. And yet made about 20% less.

Of course corporate had all the right excuses, etc. but when you talked to the vendors that came by regularly the spiffs were still the same. Corporate however was cutting how much we were getting and pocketing the rest for other 'expenses' (namely that failed joke Divx they lost their tails on)