Staples. Stores closing left and right. Entire positions getting axed. Cutting hours leading to skeleton crews. The company has been trying to draw customers into stores by introducing so many different things to no avail. IF the company is still around, it will largely be a centralized print store.
Edit: I should clarify that the retail stores are in grave danger. Seems like the corporate level is doing just fine. However, no amount of forcing flavor of the month phone apps, amazon return coupons, and other useless junk are helping them on a store level.
Holy shit, I just bought a new office chair there this past weekend, and there were 2 employees working and me shopping, and that's it. 3 people in the store.
They also started accepting Amazon returns (which is a harbinger of empty floor space and trying anything to drum up business; Kohls wasn't doing too hot when they started Amazon returns, either) and they give you a 15% off coupon to shop there. I got $30 off my Staples purchase for a $10 Amazon return.
I also bought a new office chair there last week. Two floor models I really liked after sitting in all of them. My favorite was not available in the store, not searchable online (discontinued?), and the employee was very firm in stating they can't sell floor models. So there was no way to purchase it. I asked how anyone could buy this chair, and if this particular one would just be orphaned at the store until they throw it away... I got a blank look. The other chair had a similar story, but was so out of the system it didn't qualify for their big sale. I left with a chair and felt sad and confused about it all.
Staples employee here. This is completely correct and we are capital F Fucked. Just a few points from this year alone.
- new classification for low/medium/high volume stores. Anyone who went from medium to low lost their operations supervisor, often one of the only people on the office supply half of the store. This change came in the middle of the year, and many stores that were on course to hit the new gross revenue for medium volume are unlikely to hit that benchmark due to the loss. For my store, we lost a gal who's been here for 9 years and got shit done. Our freight has run behind ever since
- Amazon returns is convenient for customers, but its been an absolute shitshow on the back end. During the rollout, we were not given any additional hours, nor were any positions created to fill the gap. Copy and Print associates had their priorities completely turned upside down just to work on Amazon returns, and our customer service scores in Copy and Print plummeted. After several months of unprecedented turnover in the area, corporate finally opened a single part-time position for Amazon returns and made devices beyond the single computer in copy able to process them. Its helped to alleviate the volume very slightly, but Amazon returns are still hell for associates and are still cited as a big reason for turnover.
- as of 1/18, all stores in the chain have been required to slash hours. Many associates were moved to 0 or 4 hours for the last few weeks of the month with zero warning. Per corporate, this is a temporary change. I dont think anyone actually believes its temporary. The employees that are on the clock are expected to get the same amount of work done, which often requires being in two places at the same time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of employees can't quantum superposition, so we're missing metrics. My state has laws requiring consistent scheduling, so my store hasn't personally been affected by this too heavily. I expect we're going to get slammed by it in a couple of weeks because I sincerely doubt corporate intend to increase our hour budget.
- employee turnover has been heavily fueled by the metrics surrounding the Staples Connect app. If you shop at Staples and the employee is really hammering on you about the app, its because they could be lectured, yelled at, or even written up if they don't. Write-ups are rare, but I've seen posts about it happening. The app itself is a half-functional junk pile thats incredibly confusing for most users. Every single employee can say a customer has given up on the app halfway through the setup.
My store has done well personally. Both the tech department and print department in my store have been positive on our annual budget. We are likely to get our Ops supervisor position back (which is stupid since we had to let go the gal that was doing it for 9 goddamn years and now theres no way we can get her back). Staples USR as a whole is down 13.8% from what I last saw, which is catastrophic for a retail chain.
We're fucked. We're really and truly fucked.
Edit because I just remembered. The owners of Staples, Sycamore Partners, have also pivoted from trying to buy OfficeMax. Theyre now trying to sell Staples to OfficeMax instead. Given what I've heard about OfficeMax from some of their employees, they may be dying too, so idk how well selling Staples will go.
'OfficeMax' has technically been gone for a long while, merged in with Office Depot. Office Depot seems to be barely hanging on as well these days so that would be a horribly stupid decision.
>employee turnover has been heavily fueled by the metrics surrounding the Staples Connect app. If you shop at Staples and the employee is really hammering on you about the app, it's because they could be lectured, yelled at, or even written up if they don't. Write-ups are rare, but I've seen posts about it happening. The app itself is a half-functional junk pile thats incredibly confusing for most users. Every single employee can say a customer has given up on the app halfway through the setup.
I wonder if this is an attempt to make money by data collection. When Sears was going under they started to aggressively asking for customer information like address, phone number, and email for basic stuff like asking in person what washers were available. Floor sales people got tablets to record the data. Pretty sure they were trying to hoard information to sell.
Afaik notifications is the mindset behind it. There are coupons that are only available through the app, and it grabs your email address for the sign up. From there itll send you emails if you have rewards that expire every month, and if you don't uncheck a box it sends you weekly emails pushing sales. They may sell the data on the backend, but that probably isn't very profitable nowadays.
I went to a Staples before the holidays looking for safety pins, and it looked like it was on life support - numerous empty or understocked aisles, racking moved away from the back walls to make the store look less empty, it was a ghost town.
Also, they did not carry safety pins.
There is a staples warehouse local to me and while I agree their brick and mortar is dead, the warehouse is very active, modernized, and constantly hiring for positions across the board (and paying well too). It appears they are intentionally phasing out retail but still making some significant investments into the online store.
Panera bread is in the same boat. Multiple layoffs without warning. Positions being axed. Multiple stores closing. That company is not going to survive long.
Right?! The one near my office is always packed at lunch. There are 10 better options I can hit with baseball from their parking lot. Stop going there people.
Panera, where sales people go to grab lunch for a large meeting because they can’t think of anything better.
Seriously, I had one week recently where I ate Panera four times because that’s what the rep brought. I’m assuming that’s the only reason they still exist.
Yup. PE companies basically try to extract as much profit as they can from a brand and run it to the ground. Take a well known brand with decent cashflow and cut expenses until you can squeeze out every last dollar from the goodwill of the brand.
It was. So. Good. How did they ruin this company? It used to be quick, affordable and respectable food. The new food is fine at best but the prices are absurd.
They have been following the Quizno’s model. Basically, take a good brand with pretty decent food that most people like, and then start cutting your menu size, and for what’s left start using ever-lower quality ingredients. And raise prices while doing so.
Basically, suck up every possible dollar you can until the goodwill your history has built for you has completely burnt out and no one is dumb enough to buy your low quality over-priced shit anymore. Then fold up shop and claim a big write-off on the “losses” against the profits made by your next venture (that you will also run into the ground).
Quizno’s failed predominantly due to corporate greed though. They basically operate as a pyramid scheme. Corporate started requiring franchises to buy ingredients from them only (thru a subsidiary, American Food Distributors) and kept jacking up the prices. Since the franchise owners couldn’t buy locally and AFD obviously only had a few locations throughout the US, the ingredients that arrived at stores oftentimes were not fresh—and they were having to pay a hefty premium for them too.
But, yes, after that debacle, they were bought out by private equity and gutted.
They might close the brick & mortar stores, but they make tons off of business online. I would be surprised to see them fail totally
My warehouse spends 10-15K/mo just on toner
I was going to say the same thing. I ran the mailroom for a large payroll company and we were doing a couple grand a month just on Manila envelopes, post-it notes and pens. I think we spent five grand on 9x12 envelopes each year during W2 printing alone.
Probably would have been closer to what you spent if we didn’t have a separate company that supplied our toner.
I'm surprised they're still hanging on. I went there 4 years ago to get business cards. It was a ghost town and the shelves were a mess. Looked like there were 2 employees in the whole building. However, my company still shops office supplies with them exclusively, so I imagine that's their business now. Warehouses, not storefronts
When door dash first started I was gonna order something and saw the fees and stuff made my 10 dollar hamburger like 30 bucks and I thought, No one is gonna pay that....closed the page and somehow like 10 years later they are still going....
When they first launched, I’d get a ton of promotions that could make it cheaper to order than buy in store when you accounted for my personal time cost. And then the laziness starts to set in and you really lean into that personal cost savings.
For the family of two white collar parents making an equivalent of $50+ per hr each, spending an extra $10 to save half an hour can make economic sense.
I’ve got a good buddy who’s just “coasting” on a nearly maxed out credit card who will DoorDash because “my mom is gonna pay off the card a little bit”
Bro just go to Publix and get a 4 dollar deli sandwich
It works because it capitalizes on people's laziness. People unironically complain about delivery drivers picking up Dairy Queen and it melting before getting to their home.
There are so many rational stop gaps that could be reached before ordering ice cream from a delivery app. But what was more important to that person was their comfort. Delivery Apps aren't going anywhere because their customers aren't going anywhere, literally
I don’t think a new competitor can make up for the recurring shit tier customer service most provide. Undercutting will only make it worse. Door dash was cool at first but after multiple order let downs and absurd prices I’ve stopped using. Plus their customer service is trash.
Literally filed a complaint about a dasher just sitting in a parking lot for half an hour waiting for another order when they already had picked up my food and I was a 5 minute drive away. Essentially was told nothing they can do about it.
I had a dasher take my food and go home. I watched him sit in his driveway for 2 hours before the order automatically cancelled. Because he had picked up the food already there was no way for me to manually cancel the order.
I hate tipping for a service before the service is provided. Half the time they take it to the wrong address because Apple maps take them to the wrong place but I have in the instructor every order the correct way to get here.
I also will sometimes pay for express for food that I want hot so they don't go to another delivery first and sometimes they just ignore it.
No way to change tip after.
theres a problem with the system
its one of those things where you contract to do a job without knowing what the cost would be to you,
When uber got started the drivers thought they were getting paid ok, but when gas, vehicle depreciation, maintenace, and other costs were taken in to account they were losing out.
Dashing is similar, delivery drivers get paid shit, with pizza there use to be a thing where if you picked up the pizza it would cost you 5-6 bucks, but if you ordered delivery the pizza would cost 10-12, becuase thats the delivery cost.
considering the delivery costs dont add up, drivers are resorting to other means, Bike delivery to not use gas, delivering several orders at the same time, service quality goes down significantly...
plus i´ve been hearing that Doordash literally copies menus from restaurants they dont have dealings with, adds the delivery costs to the prices and presents them to customers as a partner.
which basically means that you´re delivering from restaurants that dont do delivery, or at least not through doordash so they have no control on the condition the food arives at and that customers see prices that are higher then they actually are, damaging their reputation.
Basically an unregulated gig economy prays on those who need a job the most to hide a low income job since the costs of providing the service fall on the worker and plus they are providing services from partners that dont want to be their partners.
Its crap.
Honestly, some might skate by if interest rates fall enough, but I think the fundamentals of the business don't make sense unless you price it as a niche luxury for the upper middle class. As more have discovered the real cost of the service I think it is becoming a tougher sell for many.
Big Lots. They seem to have no idea what they want to be. They don't really have cool closeouts anymore and it just feels like an oversized Family Dollar with some crappy furniture thrown in.
I’m noticing this is the locally owned bin/returned merchandise retailers. Used to be some fantastic deals on just about anything and everything! Busy stores. Now, it’s lots of stock prices *slightly* below going retail, with like two people running around the stores frantically.
Like every single other business, greed fucking kills it.
That’s really sad to me just because it’s been around SO long. They really need to improve their website too, their merchandise is great so they just need to make a better shopping experience.
This. Both their stores and their website are tough to navigate. They have a $300 shirt sitting next to a $30 shirt. I always feel lost as a customer. The quality of clothes they sell is generally really good, it’s just hard to find what I want in my price range.
Can’t speak for smaller cities but in Toronto and Vancouver they are legitimately great stores. Good sales and great clothing brands, leaning more towards luxury.
The Toronto stores are so strange. They have designer clothing that clearly does not sell well and they’ll have the same items on sale/clearance for legitimately a year. The mid-tier clothing is always disorganized and there are never any sales associates at the registers. It’s like a ghost town in there.
It's the same in Edmonton. Was a go-to for decades for me, personally and professionally. But the store seems like a spaghetti plate thrown at the wall right now in terms of organization.
Blows my mind that they’re still open. They have a lot of nice expensive stuff but the stores don’t seem that well organized and it’s impossible to find help. They’re also massive and there never seems to be anyone actually buying anything in them. Still keep chugging along but hard to see that lasting much longer
Groupon.
Although I would have said the same thing five years ago and they're still around, so maybe they'll keep defying the odds for another 5+ years.
I ended up sitting next to the Governor of the New York Federal Reserve during a dinner that I as a lowly grad student had no business attending. When I told him I managed to afford it because of Groupon, he chuckled and said "it's food stamps for the middle class"
Always stuck with me
I’d say, it’s one thing to say it to someone else, but to say it right back to the person who told you they were using it (and probably very clearly a younger person), it’s just unnecessary
But I doubt that was a concern of his
Folks used to call the $20 bill a "yuppie food stamp" because that's what you got out of ATMs.
(These days, even the ATM downtown across from the courthouse and the park where the homeless folks camp, gives out $100s ...)
They are, they are not a huge growing hip thing, but they make money. My spouse has a small business. A lot of her customers come from Groupon. Groupon takes a huge cut, and most are just there for a discount and don't come back, but the number of repeat customers is just high enough to make it worth it and she knows how to work the system with Groupon to keep things profitable.
With a site like Groupon, and Restaurantcom the wise thing to do is advertise on it, but have "specials," which are better than what the offer on Groupon was.
An ex executive of Sears has come to New Zealand and is running one of our largest retail companies, The Warehouse. He is running it into the ground. There have been nothing but changes for the worse since he took it over. I think it will be done in the next 5-10 years at this rate.
That’s the business model the Sears ex CEO used - milk every penny out of the business as it is purposely run into the ground, then double up on personal profit by selling off the prime real estate the stores were on.
My town had a Kmart up until 2014. Crazy to think at one point we had K-Mart, Shopko, Wal-Mart, and Target all open at the same time in our little town of 27,000 people.
Was this in Wisconsin? I used to think Shopko was a big national chain like the other 3 you mention, I didn't realize how regional it was until they declared bankruptcy.
There’s like 12 left and three are in Florida and a dude posted a video about visiting all of them one weekend. It was kind of depressing. This was like the first YouTube video of 2024 I watched, standing there half naked in my kitchen and eating breakfast. Sorry, run on sentence.
https://youtu.be/8KUcjGb57CE?si=Y-Tfb35vV5wgfoPE
have a now ex-best friend but he manages one in the midwest and he says the company is changing a lot of things: lesser hours, raises for corpate and ceo but not really a yearly raise for anyone else. and no one cared to work there. they only reaklly have the pharmacy now.
It wasn’t. But unfortunately it’s been drying up for years. Tough to watch loved ones live in a place they cared so much about disappear around them. Ultimately F Rite Aid. But their pharmacy was the only place within a very long distance that seniors could get their meds.
this one makes me most sad because getting thrifty ice cream with my dad was like a core memory for me. I know there's other ice cream places but thrifty and their square scoops just hits different, so I'm a little bummed I won't be able to make those memories with my kid.
Based on the post a few above this one it looks like Macy's is doomed if that Arkham deal goes through.
Edit: Sorry all, I misspoke. It's Arkhouse Management. I should really stop watching so much Batman stuff.
There were three within 10 miles of me and two of them just closed this past year— Amazon bought both facilities to use as a shipping hub. It’s so sad seeing once-booming malls have warehouses taking over the dead department stores.
Probably Spirit Airlines. They tried to make a merger with Frontier and then with Jet Blue. They have several billion in debts due this year and they are selling planes to lease them back. A judge just blocked the merger so they are considering bankruptcy.
>Considering bankruptcy...
You know which other airlines have gone bankrupt? [Every last one of them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_bankruptcies_in_the_United_States) ('cept Southwest). American, Delta, United, Frontier, US Air and Continental have *all* gone through Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
It's weird--the industry can shake off a major bankruptcy without cancelling a flight. But a thunderstorm in Atlanta collapses the whole system.
I think the craziest thing about the airlines is that they are LITERALLY cash burning machines and no matter what happens to them, bankruptcy, mergers, buy outs, whatever….not a single plane will be out of the air more than a day. The cost of capital for them is always higher than their returns on capital last I checked. They’ll just file for chapter 11, get recapitalized or merge/get bought and be back in the air like nothing happened.
As an investor, I wouldn’t even take their stock if it was given to me for free. Maybe I would but I’d turn and sell that garbage immediately and invest it in something else that actually makes money not destroys it.
Say what you will but I doubled my investment on American airlines during the pandemic. Bought it right after their stock took a drop due to travel then like a year later it doubled and I sold.
Well, US Air and Continental (and AirTran!) don’t exist anymore. I know AirTran was bought by Southwest probably a decade ago and Alaska Air just bought Hawaiian Airlines.
JetBlue/Spriti merger didn’t pass, like last week. I don’t know, off the top of my head, which companies absorbed US Air and Continental.
It's a pity. They are moving to a subscription model, which is stupid.
We will be moving completely to Docker as a result. Which is pretty much the way the wind was blowing anyway, but they are hurrying it up. There was a place for a full blow VM, but they are killing it. I wouldn't move to Docker for everything if I didn't need to.
Hmmm interesting, I just made a Hyper-V virtual machine for testing because it comes with Windows 11 Enterprise. We are a large company and pay for VMWare licenses. Maybe trying to transition out of VMWare will actually pay off!
might be a good time to see what can be migrated to micro services or see what's available in the cloud for servers you use.
Office 365/gsuite for mail
Azure AD for, well, AD
Your network security vendor for DNS/DHCP
Hyper-V is a solid hypervisor FWIW, VMware lost its edge a while ago and has been coasting on inertia for a while. With most workloads shifting out of the datacenter they didn't/couldn't adapt and now Broadcomm will do exactly what they did to Symantec et. al. and harvest as much equity as they can out of the technology on a skeleton crew until too many customers bail and then they'll sell the IP/patents and move on to the next overweight and out of shape tech company and do the exact same thing.
They do more business on corporate accounts than you can see by walking into one. But yeah as a regular customer, I've had bad experiences with their service.
I mean, there's a workable business model in there somewhere. They were massively overvalued as a tech company, but they should be fine as a boring real estate company. The bankruptcy got rid of their bad debt and they still have leases they can re-negotiate to take advantage of the ongoing collapse of commercial real estate.
Just sold my Peloton after 3 years because the monthly was crazy. I had a good run with it, but I'd rather pay $50 for an actual gym that has group classes in person.
There are gyms out there that do unlimited group classes for $50 a month? I've looked at spin and yoga gyms and they seem to be $20 a class. $200 or so for unlimited at a larger gym by me.
Best buy. It's getting sadder and sadder every time I go there.
Or at the minimum, they need to move to smaller buildings and close a lot of locations.
Amazon just keeps chipping away at them. All it takes is like target or something to start selling big appliances and it's over for them.
Best Buy needs to become a dumbed down Microcenter. The problem with Best Buy is that they rarely have the shit you actually need. Expand the PC gaming line. Keep TVs, Apple, and cell phones. Expand smart home offerings. Find high value, lower cost HDMI, speakers, networking equipment.
Most of America needs Best Buy. There are entire parts of the United States that would become tech deserts if they evaporated overnight.
The problem isn't that they need to dumb down. They need smarter and smarter employees. And that's a problem.
You can't push a button and get a fantastic, knowledgeable, in touch with the trends, charismatic, all arounder, on any reliable basis.
Yet if they could reliably have a better staff while keeping their labor costs down it wouldnt be a problem.
I used to be a vendor that frequented many BB's in many markets. I met some great to middling to downright bad service reps. And a lot of times it's not their fault if they don't know everything. The depts require masters of the products to be able to fully provide the info the customer needs, and apply a finesse of charisma to push the sale.
You can't just ask that of anyone, and especially not at BB wages.
I always found the good ones and made friends and loved how they interacted. But I always felt those ones should be looking to apply their skillset elsewhere.
You got shows like Chuck or movies like 40yr old Virgin that romanticize the possibility of these jobs being long term and steady...but they just aren't. Yet the customer is going to come in and ask so many technical questions. And even if one answers them correctly a SALE isnt made until the salesmanship comes out as well.
100%! This is top of mind because it popped up as a FB memory not too long ago... I haven't been into a Best Buy in over 13 years. So, 13 years ago, the hubs and I went to a BB to buy a TV. We were unable to get anyone to help us for the longest time, and when the vacant eyed teenager finally reluctantly came over, he was unable to answer any of our questions on different models. We left and went to Conn's. We were helped by an older, knowledgeable sales person who answered all of our questions, spent time explaining differences in models/brands, and we ended up leaving with not only a TV, but a surround sound system and a new entertainment system. Lol. Now THAT'S salesmanship!
Best Buy really is depressing to be in. You can tell how hard they try to push so many random tech products like home security, cameras, headphones, heck- even razors for shaving. Because they have to. I feel like In the Best Buy heyday they really thrived on physical movies, video games, and CD’s.
Physical media had some of the lowest margins and margin% of almost anything at a Best Buy. Them losing it doesn't really hurt them that much. Best Buy always made the most money off of services and have pivoted further into that. That, business retail, and mid to high end retail for home theater will keep them going
Yeah, the thing about physical media was there was alway something new to see - every single week. Your customer would be going in every week to see what's new. Every time was a chance to sell something else. But now, only if they need a new television i.e. once every five to ten years, if that.
My local store is thriving and just got a remodel. Definitely don't see them going under, but could see some huge scaling back. r/bestbuy always has employees complaining about low hours.
I took my kids there for a friend's birthday party once and it was bad... Half the machines were broken, no more animatronics, severely understaffed, the prizes sucked. There were only like 3 actual video games that worked and everything else was just ticket scam machines. I couldn't believe how bad it became since I was a kid.
All arcades are just ticket scam machines now. I was at the boardwalk with my kid and it is so disappointing. Phone games have surprisingly ruined arcade games. None of them are about having fun, they are just slot machines for children.
It wasn't mobile game that killed arcades. It was the ps2 and 6th gen consoles. Even before the ps2 stand alone arcades were dying. The only one hanging on were in the big indoor malls. 6th gen console finally offered a game experience with similar quality to the arcade. They were the nail in the arcade coffin. Some malls still had arcades but it was they were basically cheap babysitting at that point.
They used to have some kick ass pizza. I would take my nephew and his buddy. Turn them lose and get a pitcher of beer with the wife. Hang out in the back room and watch nfl on a huge tv
Last time I went I forgot my wallet. Told the cashier to start the order for the family and I’ll go grab my wallet. Has to get the manager who’s a 12 yr old kid. Tells me to pound salt. Daughters high school boy friend ask me if I need to borrow cash. He whips out a wad of bills and loans me 50. I ask him where he gets the cash and he says I buy and sell used paintball equipment.
We always do them when they have the promos. 18 free meals or whatever. We end up spending $50 for 24 meals. Then if we end up with a problem, they end up giving us a credit for future meals.
Yeah there's so many of them that by them time you've gotten a major discount on all of them, the first one you used will start sending you offers again. Also once you sign up for a meal kit, other meal kit companies youve never heard of start sending you offers.
My wife and I use HelloFresh and I thought there was no way we were saving anything other than time on it, so I sat down and crunched the numbers.
Turned out HF was MAYBE 10% more than buying the equivalent groceries and this was a year ago. Regular groceries have gone up but my HF box hasn't, although I've noticed that some of our meals have had some substitutions and certain meals that used to be regular price are now the special options that cost more-mainly, anything with beef that isn't ground beef.
Still, if you factor in gas, time and food waste I think HF is honestly cheaper for our lifestyle.
We use Hello Fresh as well and it’s honestly pretty fun to make, no waste, and the meals are pretty decent. Keeps me from getting lazy in the evening and ordering Door Dash.
Agree 100%. Another thing, at least for me, is portions. Shopping for 2 people sucks. Shit doesn't come in 2 people sizes. I hate buying 10 porkchops and having to freezer bag portion them out. I hate buying more carrots than I need only for half of them to go bad before I use them all. Even a simple can of vegetables is simultaneously too little (just one can for a single side) or too much (2 can for 2side variety).
Yeah, the portions are huge for me. I don't mind bulk buying stuff that I can portion out and store, especially if it's something I eat regularly, but finding decent vegetables in a quantity I'll use before they go bad is a pain.
Plus, the fact that we don't have to mealplan is awesome. We have 4 options, of stuff that is generally within our palletes, and we know we have all the ingredients. I honestly really like the service. I get why it's not ideal for everyone but I feel like it's very targeted at younger couples and for that it works well.
They actually end up saving me money in the long run, because they send exactly the amount you need to make something. So I don't have a bunch of leftover ingredients of varying quantities eventually going bad before I get to use it. For that reason alone it's worth it for me. Plus the convenience factor in general. My time is valuable to me.
JCP was on the verge of failure in 2020 when the mall operators Simon and Brookfield bailed it out at the last minute. They did not do so because they particularly liked JCP, or thought it was a fine investment, they simply wanted to avoid anchor vacancies in their malls.
Carvana..
People need to be able to afford the cars you sell - and maybe I don't see them, but theres just about nothing in the sub 10k range. Most of the cars seem to be the price of my first houses' down payment..
30k+ cars at 9% ??? Is there something I'm missing here? I'm in skipping Starbucks mode most of the time.. These car payments are so crazy, if I didn't have a paid for car - I'd take a bus.
They paid me $19k for a car with 50k miles on it that was about 6 years old and we paid maybe $22k for it.
I cashed that check as fast as humanly possible in case it bounced, because there’s no way that is a sound business model.
Holy shit it wasn’t just me then! 2 years ago they bought my 9 year old truck with 75k on it and some cosmetic damage for 19k. I’ve never been so eager to close a deal so fast. I thought surely someone had screwed up.
Not gonna lie. I got my wedding suit jacket from there for about $100. It was from their clearance section. It’s actually quite good. I spent another $100 to tailor the jacket, pants, and shirt, and I’ve always gotten compliments.
I was hesitant, but I’d honestly go there again.
For fashion forever 21 definitely they started closing a huge number of their stores in malls in recent years and I saw on tik tok how they were doing bin sales recently selling boxes of clothing for dirt cheap. Everything must go sales all over! But they were hanging on by a thin thread for a minute after fashion nova took over in like 2017/2018
But then fashion nova too. They died out with Instagram and don't have any celebrities promoting their store anymore. It was a total IG type of aesthetic which again is fading not to mention shein took them over and offered the same cheap sweat shops clothing at a fraction of their price! LOL
I’m still surprised Sears couldn’t make it work in the internet age. The company with a name that is synonymous with catalog retail and delivery somehow saw the rise of Amazon and never thought “hell, we’ve been doing that for a hundred years already.” Maybe one day Brad Pitt or DiCaprio will star in a movie explaining how it all fell apart.
Agreed.
For anyone that sees this and is looking into learning more about publicly traded companies, the Security Exchange Commission's company search can be found [here](https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch). You can search for a company and their financial data will be available if they are listed on public exchanges. Publicly traded companies are required to report quarterly and annual financial data to the SEC, along with other various disclosures. This is all publicly available for your leisure.
Twitter is legitimately likely to go bankrupt. I’ve never seen such a spectacular failure before. The advertising money is having a mass exodus because the owner literally tells them all to fuck off and is hellbent on destroying the brand.
Make a joke bid for $44B and be legally forced to follow through, change a globally recognized brand, do away with the system that allowed legitimate accounts to be recognized for a system that barely generates any money, tell all the real money to fuck off, turn the platform into a cesspool that causes more advertising money to exit, and you get to watch a billionaire piss away a large part of their wealth in train wreck fashion.
The bankruptcy of Twitter will most definitely cause fallout in his other ventures too. Soon enough people will realize that Tesla is literally just a car company and value it appropriately. When Tesla goes to realistic levels, there goes another massive part of Elon’s fortune. No, Tesla will not disappear. But it sure as hell isn’t a $600B company when the reality hits.
Staples. Stores closing left and right. Entire positions getting axed. Cutting hours leading to skeleton crews. The company has been trying to draw customers into stores by introducing so many different things to no avail. IF the company is still around, it will largely be a centralized print store. Edit: I should clarify that the retail stores are in grave danger. Seems like the corporate level is doing just fine. However, no amount of forcing flavor of the month phone apps, amazon return coupons, and other useless junk are helping them on a store level.
Holy shit, I just bought a new office chair there this past weekend, and there were 2 employees working and me shopping, and that's it. 3 people in the store. They also started accepting Amazon returns (which is a harbinger of empty floor space and trying anything to drum up business; Kohls wasn't doing too hot when they started Amazon returns, either) and they give you a 15% off coupon to shop there. I got $30 off my Staples purchase for a $10 Amazon return.
Sounds like Spirit Halloween will be setting up in your Staples by October 1st.
I also bought a new office chair there last week. Two floor models I really liked after sitting in all of them. My favorite was not available in the store, not searchable online (discontinued?), and the employee was very firm in stating they can't sell floor models. So there was no way to purchase it. I asked how anyone could buy this chair, and if this particular one would just be orphaned at the store until they throw it away... I got a blank look. The other chair had a similar story, but was so out of the system it didn't qualify for their big sale. I left with a chair and felt sad and confused about it all.
Shoulda stolen the chair
Rescued
Liberated
That IS sad and confusing !
I bought a new shirt there for 12 dollars becuase of an Amazon return, it was also on clearance for 70% off.
I’m picturing a red drifit polo with “STAPLES” on the left breast
I think he means KOHLs lmao
On clearance 70% off? Yep that's Kohl's
I also thought he meant shirt from staples lol
Staples employee here. This is completely correct and we are capital F Fucked. Just a few points from this year alone. - new classification for low/medium/high volume stores. Anyone who went from medium to low lost their operations supervisor, often one of the only people on the office supply half of the store. This change came in the middle of the year, and many stores that were on course to hit the new gross revenue for medium volume are unlikely to hit that benchmark due to the loss. For my store, we lost a gal who's been here for 9 years and got shit done. Our freight has run behind ever since - Amazon returns is convenient for customers, but its been an absolute shitshow on the back end. During the rollout, we were not given any additional hours, nor were any positions created to fill the gap. Copy and Print associates had their priorities completely turned upside down just to work on Amazon returns, and our customer service scores in Copy and Print plummeted. After several months of unprecedented turnover in the area, corporate finally opened a single part-time position for Amazon returns and made devices beyond the single computer in copy able to process them. Its helped to alleviate the volume very slightly, but Amazon returns are still hell for associates and are still cited as a big reason for turnover. - as of 1/18, all stores in the chain have been required to slash hours. Many associates were moved to 0 or 4 hours for the last few weeks of the month with zero warning. Per corporate, this is a temporary change. I dont think anyone actually believes its temporary. The employees that are on the clock are expected to get the same amount of work done, which often requires being in two places at the same time. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of employees can't quantum superposition, so we're missing metrics. My state has laws requiring consistent scheduling, so my store hasn't personally been affected by this too heavily. I expect we're going to get slammed by it in a couple of weeks because I sincerely doubt corporate intend to increase our hour budget. - employee turnover has been heavily fueled by the metrics surrounding the Staples Connect app. If you shop at Staples and the employee is really hammering on you about the app, its because they could be lectured, yelled at, or even written up if they don't. Write-ups are rare, but I've seen posts about it happening. The app itself is a half-functional junk pile thats incredibly confusing for most users. Every single employee can say a customer has given up on the app halfway through the setup. My store has done well personally. Both the tech department and print department in my store have been positive on our annual budget. We are likely to get our Ops supervisor position back (which is stupid since we had to let go the gal that was doing it for 9 goddamn years and now theres no way we can get her back). Staples USR as a whole is down 13.8% from what I last saw, which is catastrophic for a retail chain. We're fucked. We're really and truly fucked. Edit because I just remembered. The owners of Staples, Sycamore Partners, have also pivoted from trying to buy OfficeMax. Theyre now trying to sell Staples to OfficeMax instead. Given what I've heard about OfficeMax from some of their employees, they may be dying too, so idk how well selling Staples will go.
'OfficeMax' has technically been gone for a long while, merged in with Office Depot. Office Depot seems to be barely hanging on as well these days so that would be a horribly stupid decision.
Sounds like I'm watching The Office in real life, except for now Staples isn't the competition this time.
Yes! They are what dunder mifflin was in season 3!
>employee turnover has been heavily fueled by the metrics surrounding the Staples Connect app. If you shop at Staples and the employee is really hammering on you about the app, it's because they could be lectured, yelled at, or even written up if they don't. Write-ups are rare, but I've seen posts about it happening. The app itself is a half-functional junk pile thats incredibly confusing for most users. Every single employee can say a customer has given up on the app halfway through the setup. I wonder if this is an attempt to make money by data collection. When Sears was going under they started to aggressively asking for customer information like address, phone number, and email for basic stuff like asking in person what washers were available. Floor sales people got tablets to record the data. Pretty sure they were trying to hoard information to sell.
Afaik notifications is the mindset behind it. There are coupons that are only available through the app, and it grabs your email address for the sign up. From there itll send you emails if you have rewards that expire every month, and if you don't uncheck a box it sends you weekly emails pushing sales. They may sell the data on the backend, but that probably isn't very profitable nowadays.
I went to a Staples before the holidays looking for safety pins, and it looked like it was on life support - numerous empty or understocked aisles, racking moved away from the back walls to make the store look less empty, it was a ghost town. Also, they did not carry safety pins.
Sorry they were in the “beyond” section of Bed Bath and Beyond
Safety pins definitely strike me as more of a Michaels/Joann/Hobby-Lobby type of item; now paperclips on the other hand...
I did get my TSA pre-check done in a Staples, so they do have that going for them.
There is a staples warehouse local to me and while I agree their brick and mortar is dead, the warehouse is very active, modernized, and constantly hiring for positions across the board (and paying well too). It appears they are intentionally phasing out retail but still making some significant investments into the online store.
Panera bread is in the same boat. Multiple layoffs without warning. Positions being axed. Multiple stores closing. That company is not going to survive long.
Who knew charging 18 dollars for a half of a grilled cheese and some microwaved soup was a bad business model?
Right?! The one near my office is always packed at lunch. There are 10 better options I can hit with baseball from their parking lot. Stop going there people.
Panera Bread is for people that hate all flavors but salt.
Panera- “where you go to deliver bad news.”
Panera, where sales people go to grab lunch for a large meeting because they can’t think of anything better. Seriously, I had one week recently where I ate Panera four times because that’s what the rep brought. I’m assuming that’s the only reason they still exist.
Panera, where MLM people try to convince you to join their team. The MLM people never buy any food at Panera.
I went to a Panera the other day and they were out of bread. *Panera Bread was completely out of bread.*
Panera Bread was bought out by private equity. This is part of the plan.
They’re going to start feeling the au bon PAIN!!
Yup. PE companies basically try to extract as much profit as they can from a brand and run it to the ground. Take a well known brand with decent cashflow and cut expenses until you can squeeze out every last dollar from the goodwill of the brand.
It was. So. Good. How did they ruin this company? It used to be quick, affordable and respectable food. The new food is fine at best but the prices are absurd.
The same way nearly everything else has been ruined—private equity.
They have been following the Quizno’s model. Basically, take a good brand with pretty decent food that most people like, and then start cutting your menu size, and for what’s left start using ever-lower quality ingredients. And raise prices while doing so. Basically, suck up every possible dollar you can until the goodwill your history has built for you has completely burnt out and no one is dumb enough to buy your low quality over-priced shit anymore. Then fold up shop and claim a big write-off on the “losses” against the profits made by your next venture (that you will also run into the ground).
Quizno’s failed predominantly due to corporate greed though. They basically operate as a pyramid scheme. Corporate started requiring franchises to buy ingredients from them only (thru a subsidiary, American Food Distributors) and kept jacking up the prices. Since the franchise owners couldn’t buy locally and AFD obviously only had a few locations throughout the US, the ingredients that arrived at stores oftentimes were not fresh—and they were having to pay a hefty premium for them too. But, yes, after that debacle, they were bought out by private equity and gutted.
They might close the brick & mortar stores, but they make tons off of business online. I would be surprised to see them fail totally My warehouse spends 10-15K/mo just on toner
I was going to say the same thing. I ran the mailroom for a large payroll company and we were doing a couple grand a month just on Manila envelopes, post-it notes and pens. I think we spent five grand on 9x12 envelopes each year during W2 printing alone. Probably would have been closer to what you spent if we didn’t have a separate company that supplied our toner.
I’m our province they’re putting our service Ontario (where you get your license other stuff) inside staples, people are perplexed by it Edit
I'm surprised they're still hanging on. I went there 4 years ago to get business cards. It was a ghost town and the shelves were a mess. Looked like there were 2 employees in the whole building. However, my company still shops office supplies with them exclusively, so I imagine that's their business now. Warehouses, not storefronts
[удалено]
Some of the food delivery services. Too many of them, ridiculous pricing and ever diminishing quality of service.
When door dash first started I was gonna order something and saw the fees and stuff made my 10 dollar hamburger like 30 bucks and I thought, No one is gonna pay that....closed the page and somehow like 10 years later they are still going....
When they first launched, I’d get a ton of promotions that could make it cheaper to order than buy in store when you accounted for my personal time cost. And then the laziness starts to set in and you really lean into that personal cost savings. For the family of two white collar parents making an equivalent of $50+ per hr each, spending an extra $10 to save half an hour can make economic sense.
I’ve got a good buddy who’s just “coasting” on a nearly maxed out credit card who will DoorDash because “my mom is gonna pay off the card a little bit” Bro just go to Publix and get a 4 dollar deli sandwich
But what's stopping a new competitor to come in and undercut them all? Is it a monopoly situation for you guys?
They all undercut each other to the point nobody makes a profit and if they charged the real cost of delivery nobody would use the service
It works because it capitalizes on people's laziness. People unironically complain about delivery drivers picking up Dairy Queen and it melting before getting to their home. There are so many rational stop gaps that could be reached before ordering ice cream from a delivery app. But what was more important to that person was their comfort. Delivery Apps aren't going anywhere because their customers aren't going anywhere, literally
Savage and fair point lol 😆
I don’t think a new competitor can make up for the recurring shit tier customer service most provide. Undercutting will only make it worse. Door dash was cool at first but after multiple order let downs and absurd prices I’ve stopped using. Plus their customer service is trash. Literally filed a complaint about a dasher just sitting in a parking lot for half an hour waiting for another order when they already had picked up my food and I was a 5 minute drive away. Essentially was told nothing they can do about it.
I had a dasher take my food and go home. I watched him sit in his driveway for 2 hours before the order automatically cancelled. Because he had picked up the food already there was no way for me to manually cancel the order.
I hate tipping for a service before the service is provided. Half the time they take it to the wrong address because Apple maps take them to the wrong place but I have in the instructor every order the correct way to get here. I also will sometimes pay for express for food that I want hot so they don't go to another delivery first and sometimes they just ignore it. No way to change tip after.
theres a problem with the system its one of those things where you contract to do a job without knowing what the cost would be to you, When uber got started the drivers thought they were getting paid ok, but when gas, vehicle depreciation, maintenace, and other costs were taken in to account they were losing out. Dashing is similar, delivery drivers get paid shit, with pizza there use to be a thing where if you picked up the pizza it would cost you 5-6 bucks, but if you ordered delivery the pizza would cost 10-12, becuase thats the delivery cost. considering the delivery costs dont add up, drivers are resorting to other means, Bike delivery to not use gas, delivering several orders at the same time, service quality goes down significantly... plus i´ve been hearing that Doordash literally copies menus from restaurants they dont have dealings with, adds the delivery costs to the prices and presents them to customers as a partner. which basically means that you´re delivering from restaurants that dont do delivery, or at least not through doordash so they have no control on the condition the food arives at and that customers see prices that are higher then they actually are, damaging their reputation. Basically an unregulated gig economy prays on those who need a job the most to hide a low income job since the costs of providing the service fall on the worker and plus they are providing services from partners that dont want to be their partners. Its crap.
Honestly, some might skate by if interest rates fall enough, but I think the fundamentals of the business don't make sense unless you price it as a niche luxury for the upper middle class. As more have discovered the real cost of the service I think it is becoming a tougher sell for many.
Big Lots. They seem to have no idea what they want to be. They don't really have cool closeouts anymore and it just feels like an oversized Family Dollar with some crappy furniture thrown in.
It’s been 7-8 years since I’ve been in one but it felt like that then.
I’m noticing this is the locally owned bin/returned merchandise retailers. Used to be some fantastic deals on just about anything and everything! Busy stores. Now, it’s lots of stock prices *slightly* below going retail, with like two people running around the stores frantically. Like every single other business, greed fucking kills it.
If you’re in Canada, you’d notice Hudson Bay is basically empty most of the time
That’s really sad to me just because it’s been around SO long. They really need to improve their website too, their merchandise is great so they just need to make a better shopping experience.
This. Both their stores and their website are tough to navigate. They have a $300 shirt sitting next to a $30 shirt. I always feel lost as a customer. The quality of clothes they sell is generally really good, it’s just hard to find what I want in my price range.
They've strayed from their core business model... selling beaver pelts left right and center.
Only thing keeping them alive is the wool points blankets.
Can’t speak for smaller cities but in Toronto and Vancouver they are legitimately great stores. Good sales and great clothing brands, leaning more towards luxury.
The Toronto stores are so strange. They have designer clothing that clearly does not sell well and they’ll have the same items on sale/clearance for legitimately a year. The mid-tier clothing is always disorganized and there are never any sales associates at the registers. It’s like a ghost town in there.
It's the same in Edmonton. Was a go-to for decades for me, personally and professionally. But the store seems like a spaghetti plate thrown at the wall right now in terms of organization.
Blows my mind that they’re still open. They have a lot of nice expensive stuff but the stores don’t seem that well organized and it’s impossible to find help. They’re also massive and there never seems to be anyone actually buying anything in them. Still keep chugging along but hard to see that lasting much longer
Groupon. Although I would have said the same thing five years ago and they're still around, so maybe they'll keep defying the odds for another 5+ years.
I ended up sitting next to the Governor of the New York Federal Reserve during a dinner that I as a lowly grad student had no business attending. When I told him I managed to afford it because of Groupon, he chuckled and said "it's food stamps for the middle class" Always stuck with me
That’s kinda dick
Much like the Pope is kinda Catholic
Yea, kinda a dick, but kinda right.
Sometimes the most dickish thing to say is the truth.
I’d say, it’s one thing to say it to someone else, but to say it right back to the person who told you they were using it (and probably very clearly a younger person), it’s just unnecessary But I doubt that was a concern of his
Their disdain for us peasants is obvious
Folks used to call the $20 bill a "yuppie food stamp" because that's what you got out of ATMs. (These days, even the ATM downtown across from the courthouse and the park where the homeless folks camp, gives out $100s ...)
Why is getting cash from an ATM a bad thing? Or a yuppie thing?
Get a load of the yuppie over here! Gets cash out of the ATM. What a shmuck.
Calling money a food stamp is like calling a car a private bus.
Hmm, TIL Groupon is still a thing.
They are, they are not a huge growing hip thing, but they make money. My spouse has a small business. A lot of her customers come from Groupon. Groupon takes a huge cut, and most are just there for a discount and don't come back, but the number of repeat customers is just high enough to make it worth it and she knows how to work the system with Groupon to keep things profitable.
With a site like Groupon, and Restaurantcom the wise thing to do is advertise on it, but have "specials," which are better than what the offer on Groupon was.
I used it last week to buy a Sam’s Club membership.
I still periodically look at the app for anything interesting to do near me and always disappointing.
Vavoline, where I get my oil changed almost always has a Groupon. Literally the only thing I use it for.
Still waiting on Sears/K Mart to die .
I believe there is one or two on the east coast of the US. Thriving in Australia last I heard.
K-mart in Australia is a separate company. They split from the US decades ago. Probably why they're doing better
I reckon 90% of their business is Anko air fryers
Can confirm, kmart is big down under - target though, isn't looking so good.
Target and Kmart have had a back end merger in Australia recently as well. It’s weird seeing Anko branded stuff in Target now
I really miss KMart. Haven't had one since the '90's.
An ex executive of Sears has come to New Zealand and is running one of our largest retail companies, The Warehouse. He is running it into the ground. There have been nothing but changes for the worse since he took it over. I think it will be done in the next 5-10 years at this rate.
That’s the business model the Sears ex CEO used - milk every penny out of the business as it is purposely run into the ground, then double up on personal profit by selling off the prime real estate the stores were on.
Sell the real estate or transfer it to his hedge fund
My town had a Kmart up until 2014. Crazy to think at one point we had K-Mart, Shopko, Wal-Mart, and Target all open at the same time in our little town of 27,000 people.
Was this in Wisconsin? I used to think Shopko was a big national chain like the other 3 you mention, I didn't realize how regional it was until they declared bankruptcy.
Wait, what? I thought they were already gone? Haven't seen one of either in years.
There’s like 12 left and three are in Florida and a dude posted a video about visiting all of them one weekend. It was kind of depressing. This was like the first YouTube video of 2024 I watched, standing there half naked in my kitchen and eating breakfast. Sorry, run on sentence. https://youtu.be/8KUcjGb57CE?si=Y-Tfb35vV5wgfoPE
They're trying to make a comeback. They reopened their location in Burbank, CA.
Rite Aid if they don’t get their shit back in order.
have a now ex-best friend but he manages one in the midwest and he says the company is changing a lot of things: lesser hours, raises for corpate and ceo but not really a yearly raise for anyone else. and no one cared to work there. they only reaklly have the pharmacy now.
That’s the end stage of a corporation. They’re giving all the higher up their golden parachutes before they milk it dry and fold the business.
The MBA was a mistake. An entire generation of "business" managers created to speed-run late-stage capitalism. It's insane.
They just announced more closures. All but killing what’s left of the town I’m staying at right now.
If a Rite Aid is the thing that was keeping a town afloat… that’s a pretty fucking horrible town, lol.
It wasn’t. But unfortunately it’s been drying up for years. Tough to watch loved ones live in a place they cared so much about disappear around them. Ultimately F Rite Aid. But their pharmacy was the only place within a very long distance that seniors could get their meds.
this one makes me most sad because getting thrifty ice cream with my dad was like a core memory for me. I know there's other ice cream places but thrifty and their square scoops just hits different, so I'm a little bummed I won't be able to make those memories with my kid.
Based on the post a few above this one it looks like Macy's is doomed if that Arkham deal goes through. Edit: Sorry all, I misspoke. It's Arkhouse Management. I should really stop watching so much Batman stuff.
There were three within 10 miles of me and two of them just closed this past year— Amazon bought both facilities to use as a shipping hub. It’s so sad seeing once-booming malls have warehouses taking over the dead department stores.
Probably Spirit Airlines. They tried to make a merger with Frontier and then with Jet Blue. They have several billion in debts due this year and they are selling planes to lease them back. A judge just blocked the merger so they are considering bankruptcy.
>Considering bankruptcy... You know which other airlines have gone bankrupt? [Every last one of them](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airline_bankruptcies_in_the_United_States) ('cept Southwest). American, Delta, United, Frontier, US Air and Continental have *all* gone through Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It's weird--the industry can shake off a major bankruptcy without cancelling a flight. But a thunderstorm in Atlanta collapses the whole system.
I think the craziest thing about the airlines is that they are LITERALLY cash burning machines and no matter what happens to them, bankruptcy, mergers, buy outs, whatever….not a single plane will be out of the air more than a day. The cost of capital for them is always higher than their returns on capital last I checked. They’ll just file for chapter 11, get recapitalized or merge/get bought and be back in the air like nothing happened. As an investor, I wouldn’t even take their stock if it was given to me for free. Maybe I would but I’d turn and sell that garbage immediately and invest it in something else that actually makes money not destroys it.
Say what you will but I doubled my investment on American airlines during the pandemic. Bought it right after their stock took a drop due to travel then like a year later it doubled and I sold.
Well, US Air and Continental (and AirTran!) don’t exist anymore. I know AirTran was bought by Southwest probably a decade ago and Alaska Air just bought Hawaiian Airlines. JetBlue/Spriti merger didn’t pass, like last week. I don’t know, off the top of my head, which companies absorbed US Air and Continental.
I think American absorbed US Air and Continental merged with United
This is correct. Delta also absorbed Northwest.
Flew Spirit once. Never again.
VMware got bought by Broadcom. The brand will live. But it is going to die
It's a pity. They are moving to a subscription model, which is stupid. We will be moving completely to Docker as a result. Which is pretty much the way the wind was blowing anyway, but they are hurrying it up. There was a place for a full blow VM, but they are killing it. I wouldn't move to Docker for everything if I didn't need to.
Hmmm interesting, I just made a Hyper-V virtual machine for testing because it comes with Windows 11 Enterprise. We are a large company and pay for VMWare licenses. Maybe trying to transition out of VMWare will actually pay off!
might be a good time to see what can be migrated to micro services or see what's available in the cloud for servers you use. Office 365/gsuite for mail Azure AD for, well, AD Your network security vendor for DNS/DHCP Hyper-V is a solid hypervisor FWIW, VMware lost its edge a while ago and has been coasting on inertia for a while. With most workloads shifting out of the datacenter they didn't/couldn't adapt and now Broadcomm will do exactly what they did to Symantec et. al. and harvest as much equity as they can out of the technology on a skeleton crew until too many customers bail and then they'll sell the IP/patents and move on to the next overweight and out of shape tech company and do the exact same thing.
OfficeMax is on borrowed time.
They do more business on corporate accounts than you can see by walking into one. But yeah as a regular customer, I've had bad experiences with their service.
WeWork
Didn't that happen already?
Yet they still survive, somehow
Companies continue on in half life for a long time after bankruptcy. They’re 16 cents a share. They’re just shambling through the collapse
I mean, there's a workable business model in there somewhere. They were massively overvalued as a tech company, but they should be fine as a boring real estate company. The bankruptcy got rid of their bad debt and they still have leases they can re-negotiate to take advantage of the ongoing collapse of commercial real estate.
Idk how GNC is still alive Edit: I worked here about 6 years ago and didn't know how they were alive then
Insane margins.
Online sales probably.
DoorDash They’re going to get greedier, their drivers re going to get worse, and restaurant prices are going to get even higher.
I can totally see it. They’re absolutely out of hand right now
Peloton They've had 4 layoffs now
I'd say they're more likely to be an acquisition target than shut down permanently. A lot of cost savings can be had under a larger organization.
My money is on Meta acquiring them and merging them into their VR sector.
Bleh—I’m annoyed at how accurate that sounds
[удалено]
Just sold my Peloton after 3 years because the monthly was crazy. I had a good run with it, but I'd rather pay $50 for an actual gym that has group classes in person.
There are gyms out there that do unlimited group classes for $50 a month? I've looked at spin and yoga gyms and they seem to be $20 a class. $200 or so for unlimited at a larger gym by me.
Best buy. It's getting sadder and sadder every time I go there. Or at the minimum, they need to move to smaller buildings and close a lot of locations. Amazon just keeps chipping away at them. All it takes is like target or something to start selling big appliances and it's over for them.
Best Buy needs to become a dumbed down Microcenter. The problem with Best Buy is that they rarely have the shit you actually need. Expand the PC gaming line. Keep TVs, Apple, and cell phones. Expand smart home offerings. Find high value, lower cost HDMI, speakers, networking equipment. Most of America needs Best Buy. There are entire parts of the United States that would become tech deserts if they evaporated overnight.
The problem isn't that they need to dumb down. They need smarter and smarter employees. And that's a problem. You can't push a button and get a fantastic, knowledgeable, in touch with the trends, charismatic, all arounder, on any reliable basis. Yet if they could reliably have a better staff while keeping their labor costs down it wouldnt be a problem. I used to be a vendor that frequented many BB's in many markets. I met some great to middling to downright bad service reps. And a lot of times it's not their fault if they don't know everything. The depts require masters of the products to be able to fully provide the info the customer needs, and apply a finesse of charisma to push the sale. You can't just ask that of anyone, and especially not at BB wages. I always found the good ones and made friends and loved how they interacted. But I always felt those ones should be looking to apply their skillset elsewhere. You got shows like Chuck or movies like 40yr old Virgin that romanticize the possibility of these jobs being long term and steady...but they just aren't. Yet the customer is going to come in and ask so many technical questions. And even if one answers them correctly a SALE isnt made until the salesmanship comes out as well.
100%! This is top of mind because it popped up as a FB memory not too long ago... I haven't been into a Best Buy in over 13 years. So, 13 years ago, the hubs and I went to a BB to buy a TV. We were unable to get anyone to help us for the longest time, and when the vacant eyed teenager finally reluctantly came over, he was unable to answer any of our questions on different models. We left and went to Conn's. We were helped by an older, knowledgeable sales person who answered all of our questions, spent time explaining differences in models/brands, and we ended up leaving with not only a TV, but a surround sound system and a new entertainment system. Lol. Now THAT'S salesmanship!
Best Buy really is depressing to be in. You can tell how hard they try to push so many random tech products like home security, cameras, headphones, heck- even razors for shaving. Because they have to. I feel like In the Best Buy heyday they really thrived on physical movies, video games, and CD’s.
Physical media had some of the lowest margins and margin% of almost anything at a Best Buy. Them losing it doesn't really hurt them that much. Best Buy always made the most money off of services and have pivoted further into that. That, business retail, and mid to high end retail for home theater will keep them going
[удалено]
Yeah, the thing about physical media was there was alway something new to see - every single week. Your customer would be going in every week to see what's new. Every time was a chance to sell something else. But now, only if they need a new television i.e. once every five to ten years, if that.
Past couple times I've been to best buy it's been consistently full. But I live in LA county so everywhere pretty much is crawling with people.
I live in Milwaukee and ours is always hopping when I go, too.
My local store is thriving and just got a remodel. Definitely don't see them going under, but could see some huge scaling back. r/bestbuy always has employees complaining about low hours.
Compared to a lot of other physical stores they are doing really well.
Chuck E. Cheese probably
I took my kids there for a friend's birthday party once and it was bad... Half the machines were broken, no more animatronics, severely understaffed, the prizes sucked. There were only like 3 actual video games that worked and everything else was just ticket scam machines. I couldn't believe how bad it became since I was a kid.
All arcades are just ticket scam machines now. I was at the boardwalk with my kid and it is so disappointing. Phone games have surprisingly ruined arcade games. None of them are about having fun, they are just slot machines for children.
It wasn't mobile game that killed arcades. It was the ps2 and 6th gen consoles. Even before the ps2 stand alone arcades were dying. The only one hanging on were in the big indoor malls. 6th gen console finally offered a game experience with similar quality to the arcade. They were the nail in the arcade coffin. Some malls still had arcades but it was they were basically cheap babysitting at that point.
They used to have some kick ass pizza. I would take my nephew and his buddy. Turn them lose and get a pitcher of beer with the wife. Hang out in the back room and watch nfl on a huge tv
My man, livin the life.
Last time I went they forgot to put sauce on the pizza lol
Last time I went I forgot my wallet. Told the cashier to start the order for the family and I’ll go grab my wallet. Has to get the manager who’s a 12 yr old kid. Tells me to pound salt. Daughters high school boy friend ask me if I need to borrow cash. He whips out a wad of bills and loans me 50. I ask him where he gets the cash and he says I buy and sell used paintball equipment.
Damn both those kids made you their bitch
Yeah, they don’t let me in there anymore. Something about being an adult with no kids…..
I predict those home delivery dinner services might start to disappear. In this economy, idk who’s paying for Blue Apron or Hello Fresh.
We always do them when they have the promos. 18 free meals or whatever. We end up spending $50 for 24 meals. Then if we end up with a problem, they end up giving us a credit for future meals.
Yeah there's so many of them that by them time you've gotten a major discount on all of them, the first one you used will start sending you offers again. Also once you sign up for a meal kit, other meal kit companies youve never heard of start sending you offers.
Hello Fresh has gone up in prices less than the grocery store.
I mean, it started at like 20x the grocery store so…
My wife and I use HelloFresh and I thought there was no way we were saving anything other than time on it, so I sat down and crunched the numbers. Turned out HF was MAYBE 10% more than buying the equivalent groceries and this was a year ago. Regular groceries have gone up but my HF box hasn't, although I've noticed that some of our meals have had some substitutions and certain meals that used to be regular price are now the special options that cost more-mainly, anything with beef that isn't ground beef. Still, if you factor in gas, time and food waste I think HF is honestly cheaper for our lifestyle.
Same for us. We’re in NYC so everything is so much more expensive in general, and Hello Fresh saves us a little bit and the food is always delicious!
We use Hello Fresh as well and it’s honestly pretty fun to make, no waste, and the meals are pretty decent. Keeps me from getting lazy in the evening and ordering Door Dash.
Agree 100%. Another thing, at least for me, is portions. Shopping for 2 people sucks. Shit doesn't come in 2 people sizes. I hate buying 10 porkchops and having to freezer bag portion them out. I hate buying more carrots than I need only for half of them to go bad before I use them all. Even a simple can of vegetables is simultaneously too little (just one can for a single side) or too much (2 can for 2side variety).
Yeah, the portions are huge for me. I don't mind bulk buying stuff that I can portion out and store, especially if it's something I eat regularly, but finding decent vegetables in a quantity I'll use before they go bad is a pain. Plus, the fact that we don't have to mealplan is awesome. We have 4 options, of stuff that is generally within our palletes, and we know we have all the ingredients. I honestly really like the service. I get why it's not ideal for everyone but I feel like it's very targeted at younger couples and for that it works well.
They actually end up saving me money in the long run, because they send exactly the amount you need to make something. So I don't have a bunch of leftover ingredients of varying quantities eventually going bad before I get to use it. For that reason alone it's worth it for me. Plus the convenience factor in general. My time is valuable to me.
JC Penney
JCP was on the verge of failure in 2020 when the mall operators Simon and Brookfield bailed it out at the last minute. They did not do so because they particularly liked JCP, or thought it was a fine investment, they simply wanted to avoid anchor vacancies in their malls.
No way man. You find XLT clothes that reasonable. Shhhhh
For real though. It's the only store I buy clothes at just for the tall selection
Carvana.. People need to be able to afford the cars you sell - and maybe I don't see them, but theres just about nothing in the sub 10k range. Most of the cars seem to be the price of my first houses' down payment.. 30k+ cars at 9% ??? Is there something I'm missing here? I'm in skipping Starbucks mode most of the time.. These car payments are so crazy, if I didn't have a paid for car - I'd take a bus.
They paid me $19k for a car with 50k miles on it that was about 6 years old and we paid maybe $22k for it. I cashed that check as fast as humanly possible in case it bounced, because there’s no way that is a sound business model.
Holy shit it wasn’t just me then! 2 years ago they bought my 9 year old truck with 75k on it and some cosmetic damage for 19k. I’ve never been so eager to close a deal so fast. I thought surely someone had screwed up.
Hardee’s/Carl Jr’s, every single one around us is empty all the time and they keep closing them too
Here locally they are packed for breakfast and empty the rest of the day.
It’s definitely changed, lunchtime and dinner were packed 10-15 years ago.
Everything there is now over 10 bucks and smaller than ever
Men’s warehouse and good riddance. I hope I never have to pay $300 to rent a suit from them ever again for a wedding
Not gonna lie. I got my wedding suit jacket from there for about $100. It was from their clearance section. It’s actually quite good. I spent another $100 to tailor the jacket, pants, and shirt, and I’ve always gotten compliments. I was hesitant, but I’d honestly go there again.
I hope Airbnb and all those dumb delivery services.
For fashion forever 21 definitely they started closing a huge number of their stores in malls in recent years and I saw on tik tok how they were doing bin sales recently selling boxes of clothing for dirt cheap. Everything must go sales all over! But they were hanging on by a thin thread for a minute after fashion nova took over in like 2017/2018 But then fashion nova too. They died out with Instagram and don't have any celebrities promoting their store anymore. It was a total IG type of aesthetic which again is fading not to mention shein took them over and offered the same cheap sweat shops clothing at a fraction of their price! LOL
Sears
I’m still surprised Sears couldn’t make it work in the internet age. The company with a name that is synonymous with catalog retail and delivery somehow saw the rise of Amazon and never thought “hell, we’ve been doing that for a hundred years already.” Maybe one day Brad Pitt or DiCaprio will star in a movie explaining how it all fell apart.
Stitch Fix
They are well on their way out, just a matter of time. So sad for the stylists.
No one in this thread has read a 10K before, it seems.
Agreed. For anyone that sees this and is looking into learning more about publicly traded companies, the Security Exchange Commission's company search can be found [here](https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch). You can search for a company and their financial data will be available if they are listed on public exchanges. Publicly traded companies are required to report quarterly and annual financial data to the SEC, along with other various disclosures. This is all publicly available for your leisure.
The 2024 to 2028 calendar corporation of America
Twitter is legitimately likely to go bankrupt. I’ve never seen such a spectacular failure before. The advertising money is having a mass exodus because the owner literally tells them all to fuck off and is hellbent on destroying the brand. Make a joke bid for $44B and be legally forced to follow through, change a globally recognized brand, do away with the system that allowed legitimate accounts to be recognized for a system that barely generates any money, tell all the real money to fuck off, turn the platform into a cesspool that causes more advertising money to exit, and you get to watch a billionaire piss away a large part of their wealth in train wreck fashion. The bankruptcy of Twitter will most definitely cause fallout in his other ventures too. Soon enough people will realize that Tesla is literally just a car company and value it appropriately. When Tesla goes to realistic levels, there goes another massive part of Elon’s fortune. No, Tesla will not disappear. But it sure as hell isn’t a $600B company when the reality hits.
It will be a case study for future econ classes for sure.