HOW HARD COULD IT BE? BY JOEL SPOLSKY
It Isn’t the Economy, Stupid
Many companies that have gone bust didn’t die
because of the recession. They failed for one
reason: They treated customers poorly
people and replaced them with
generic, untrained, near-minimum-wage workers.
So it was no surprise to me that
Circuit City failed. The chain’s CEO,
in an e-mail, blamed the demise
on “poor macroeconomic conditions”—an assertion that was
repeated by The Associated Press,
which cited “the expanding financial
crisis” for the liquidation.
You know what? I don’t buy the
argument that the economy caused
Circuit City’s failure. Take one look
at its competitors, and you know
that the market for consumer electronics and computer equipment remains strong, even in this economy. You can walk into any Apple Store and see large
crowds of people lining up to buy computers and
iPods. But enough has been said about how wonderful Apple is. I want to tell you about another first-class
consumer electronics retailer—a much smaller business you probably haven’t been to, unless you live in
New York City or are a professional photographer or
an avid hobbyist. It’s called B&H.
B&H opened in 1973, and it’s an amazing place.
If you are in Manhattan, you should visit the store,
Who’s to Blame? The retailer
blames its demise on the lousy
economy. A culture that produced
hapless customer service was
probably a bigger factor.
When Circuit City went kaput in January, I didn’t waste
my time on the chain’s so-called going-out-of-business sale. First of all, Circuit City never had anything
good in stock, even before it decided to go out of business. A year ago, I looked at the retailer’s entire selection of laptops, and all I found were these huge, ugly, shiny things festooned
with garish stickers announcing that they had “Intel Inside” and were “Vista
Adequate” and “Y2K Ready.” Also, I had read on the Consumer Reports
website that Circuit City’s liquidator had actually raised the price on many
items for the going-out-of-business “sale.”
FROM TOP: JOSH TITUS; AP
Truth be told, I don’t think I ever bought anything from Circuit City anyway. On weekends, I would occasionally wander into the local branch, attracted
like a moth to the bright wall of plasma TVs. When I actually needed a new
TV, however, I found the Circuit City salesperson to be so aggressively
unknowledgeable and remarkably useless that I fled to Best Buy, where I was
helped by a cheerful, 20-year-old twerp who knew everything. I later learned
that in 2007, Circuit City had fired the chain’s 3,400 most experienced sales-
