Everybody says Best Buy killed Circuit City. It didn't. The company that invented the big-box electronics store, that put the first car stereo installation bay inside a retail chain, that trained salespeople who actually knew what they were selling — it didn't lose to a competitor. It lost to itself. This is the chain that rewired how Americans bought televisions and washing machines, the commission model that built a culture so intense employees treated the floor like a trading pit, and the one boardroom decision in 2007 that didn't save money — it just announced to everyone watching that the end had already been decided. Three thousand stores across forty years. Gone in eighteen months. If you worked a shift there or talked a salesman into a better deal on a Trinitron, tell me what store and what year. New one of these every couple of weeks. Subscribe if you want to keep taking the trips back.
Everybody says Best Buy killed Circuit City. It didn't. The company that invented the big-box electronics store, that put the first car stereo installation bay inside a retail chain, that trained salespeople who actually knew what they were selling — it didn't lose to a competitor. It lost to itself. This is the chain that rewired how Americans bought televisions and washing machines, the commission model that built a culture so intense employees treated the floor like a trading pit, and the one boardroom decision in 2007 that didn't save money — it just announced to everyone watching that the end had already been decided. Three thousand stores across forty years. Gone in eighteen months. If you worked a shift there or talked a salesman into a better deal on a Trinitron, tell me what store and what year. New one of these every couple of weeks. Subscribe if you want to keep taking the trips back.