So, sometimes I’m a sick puppy. I frequently think of certain stores and wonder, “How the heck are they staying in business?”. And then they go out of business, and I feel a sense of validation that they have.
Future Shop and Best Buy, often side by side. That alone isn’t a sustainable business model in the long run. Personally, I hated Best Buy, for layout, pricing, general business approach. Future Shop wasn’t awesome, but often had better deals for stuff I was looking for. Until they “merged” at least and then F/S went the way of the dodo.
Radio Shack. That one still bothers me, how does it STAY IN BUSINESS? Oh, right, sorry, “The Source”. Yeah, cuz that made their ridiculous prices and poor quality so much more palatable.
Fancy Sock Store. There. are. no. customers. The store at work was always empty. Yet it stayed open for years. When it finally closed, as much as people lamented the loss of a place to buy over-priced hosiery in an emergency, I still rejoiced.
The doughnut shop in Sandy Hill that closed and reopened as a different doughnut shop three times in two years. What were the new owners thinking? That the old owners had a bad pricing model and they could turn a profit with their option? In the SAME DAMN LOCATION? It was a chicken place for a while, at least that was different. I think it is shawarma now, and with four other stores in the same line in the area, it seems to have found a niche.
So another store closed this week over on Merivale and while I never went there, I liked it was still there. Jumbo Video. Sure, all the video rental stores are gone, lots of digital options now. I suspect most are pirate sites, but still, Netflix et al was going to kill it eventually. Yet it also had video game rentals in the back for multiple consoles. Some older stuff. They weren’t super expensive for their videos either and were relatively flexible on returns. If I watched movies and didn’t have digital solutions out the wazoo, I would have considered them. From a business model, I feel validated that just two weeks ago I was wondering, “How do they stay in business?”.
From a personal level, I feel disappointed that another piece of business history is gone. I would like to think even for nostalgia that one store could make a go of it. Maybe also offering typewriter repair, I suppose. Sigh. I’m getting old. Now even business failures don’t thrill me like they used to.
