I do not recall if Admin called this one specifically, but he has been predicting the demise of many of these retail stores for some time, and has always been right. Radio Shack is closing 1100 stores, after a 20% decline in sales and a fourth Q loss of almost $200 million.
Yep, the recovery sure is gaining steam. With a little more coal, I am sure the economy will reach escape velocity.
Well done, Admin. I expect you saw this coming.
Thanks Llpoh
I actually crowed about it earlier in the day, but I did it in an understated manner because you know I don’t like to gloat or do a victory dance over a dead body.
The MSM has totally ignored the horrible 4th quarter earnings reports of all the retailers. It doesn’t fit their stock market at all time highs storyline.
They send retail stocks like JC Penney soaring because they only lost $240 million.
If anything defines the Admin, it is his extreme humility.
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Damn it – Admin, please do us all a favor and delete those abominations. They are gonna fuck up a perfectly good thread.
What abominations?
Remember when Smokey thought I had screwed up by using the term maroon?
I hammered him for weeks with Bugs Bunny pictures.
The good old days of TBP.
I remember – you always have had a way to get under a guy’s skin! Folks think it is wild here now, but they have no idea.
Can you imagine what would have happened between Clammy and Smokey? Holy shit, you could have sold tickets to that.
Somebody would have had a stroke.
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I haven’t followed the loss leaders like Pennys, Radio Shack, and some of the others like LLPOH and Administrator have but I’m not surprised that the big store corporations are sucking hind tit, or none at all, when it comes to retail sales. Books, clothes, some furniture, many food items, electronics, and on it goes …. I can get most everything at Amazon and other online sites. Shopping that way is easier and usually cheaper (postage included). Others see it the same way.
As for consumer spending, like with the big chains struggling, Administrator called it. Cah-ching, cah-ching, isn’t ringing like it did in years past. Maybe Jesus Christ is taking revenge on us Americans for ignoring our traditions and his message by returning us to the BCE (Before Consumer Era.)
I find it funny when you fucks reminisce about Smokey. I never really thought he was all that clever, or amusing. Mostly I just ignored him out of indifference.
I was 23 in 1979 when the worst economic downturn since 1929 hit.
The first thing you learned was the term “vital possessions”.
Soon this spoiled rotten pampered nation of relaxed pussies is going
to discover that electronics (are not vital to their survival )!!!
We’re seeing the end of the “light burns brightest”, the beginning of ” Rome about to burn”
the dumbfucks are rushing to the showrooms to buy new
4X4 ‘s at the local dealers this week… having no idea that gas may be
$10 a gallon in 6 months, and, they may be unemployed by then !
The only one who will benefit from these store closings are the E-sales pages,
the parcel people, and the USPS, which I might say is doing a fabulous job,
considering not long ago, Chicago dirt bag postman were throwing sacks
of mail in the river and snorting crack on duty.
Close the rest of those worthless Radio Shacks! for years all they sold was
junk that quit working within 6 months… only when they adopted brand names
did they sell anything decent… same goes for SEARS and their worthless Kenmore garbage!
let SEARS burn too!
Lets get on with it.
Truman – my vital possession in hard times was always a pickup truck that runs. Can always make a living with a pick up if need be.
Online sales have really hit these sticks & bricks stores. Strip centers across America will miss that lease space, all you have left are beauty salons, spas, health clubs, cell phone stores, tax preparers and Subways. All that is left is chirp of cricket
“Maybe Jesus Christ is taking revenge on us Americans for ignoring our traditions and his message by returning us to the BCE (Before Consumer Era.)”
Amazing how people attribute magical or supernatural causes to something when the material causes are so visible.
Causality is catching up with us, that’s all. For 50 years we have consistently consumed more than we produced and borrowed ever larger amounts of money to pay for it, at the cost of investment in the industries and technologies we need to maintain our standard of living.
When you see someone pull money out of his business or quit his job, and equity-strip his house to buy $80K cars and shopping sprees at Barney’s, are you surprised when he ends bankrupt and jobless? Did “Jesus” have anything to do with his plight?
Hey, Radioshack, the 80s called-they want their cheap junk back.
2007 called-they want their economy back.
The Millenials called, too-they want to know what a radio shack is?
You guys can joke, but I actually know people who shopped there for the electronic components. My dad was a radioshack shopper. I’ve known technicians who visited radioshack to get their components for various projects, too. But I don’t know many people who go to radioshack for anything. I guess cell phones and stereo components and universal remotes do not a business make. Somehow I don’t see mail order filling the gap for long-I suspect cheap oil will eventually doom the internet/mail order complex.
Fucking in-text advertising is infiltrating this site!
I remember back when you could buy a diode or a resistor or a heathkit product at radio shack
now all they seem to carry are cell phones and related crap
no wonder they are dying…at this point, good riddance
Hey! Admin just sent me a private note offering to sell me all of his J.C. Penny stock! What a guy! I am cashing out my life savings to take advantage of this great offer!
Maybe they should close twice that many stores, at least.
They will still have 4000 stores open?! Really?!
Something tells me they will have to re-visit this subject in the not-so-distant future.
Retail is going to continue to consolidate until we are back to the square footage per consumer that makes economic sense, which is 4-8 sq ft retail per man, woman, and child. We had 4 sq ft of retail space per consumer in 1964, a very prosperous time in this country, and I don’t remember there being any shortage of retail venues or consumer goodies on which to squander your paycheck.
The big retail buildout and proliferation of “specialty” chains and big box stores came in the 1980s, concurrent with the loss of our manufacturing, the true font of wealth, and the increasing financialization of our economy. Almost every one of these chains, and the malls and power centers their outlets are housed in, was built with tax-backed loans, and often, local subsidies.
It never did make sense to have two Radio Shacks within a mile of each other, or even around the corner from each other, just like it never made sense to have 4 major bookstore chains with stores that were bigger than some old-line department stores.
I’m not sad. This consolidation might actually create more opportunity for local business owners if we would just let it happen.
Staples Celebrates The Recovery With 225 Store Closures, Sales Plunge
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 03/06/2014 10:59 -0500
Nothing says global ‘economic recovery’ like a major retailer drastically missing revenue expectations, slashing earnings projections and announcing it will shutter 225 stores nationwide. Staples, the largest US office supplies retailer, hit the triple whammy and didn’t blame it all on the weather as the CEO notes “our customers are using less office supplies.” Or maybe there are just less office workers? Isolating Staples is a little unfair but as the largest (and most belwhether-ish), it is perhaps time to question the constant meme of escape velocity, improving fundamentals, and cleanest-dirty-shirt growth…
The results:
The company forecast earnings of 17-22 cents per share for the first quarter. Analysts on average were expecting 27 cents per share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.Staples’ revenue fell 10.6 percent to $5.87 billion in the fourth quarter ended Feb. 1, below the average analyst estimate of $5.97 billion.
Excluding the impact of an extra week in the year-earlier quarter, sales declined 4 percent.
Same-store sales in North America, excluding sales through Staples.com, fell 7 percent as Staples sold fewer business machines, technology accessories, office supplies and computers.
Revenue at the company’s international division fell 13 percent, hurt by weakness in Europe and Australia.
But apart from that – it was great:
Staples Inc, the largest U.S. office supplies retailer, forecast another quarter of sales decline as it loses customers to mass market chains and e-retailers, and the company said it would close up to 225 stores in North America by 2015.
The closures represent up to 12 percent of the company’s 1,846 stores in the United States and Canada.
“Our customers are using less office supplies…
Staples said it had initiated a multi-year cost reduction plan that was expected to generate annualized pretax cost savings of about $500 million by 2015.
So less Capex, fewer stores, less sales… time to announce a dividend hike and massive buyback program?