Best Buy Kills Off Future Shop 198
Lirodon writes: Future Shop, a Canadian electronics chain that was bought by Best Buy in 2001, but continued to operate in parallel with the newly-opened Canadian locations of the U.S. retailer, is no more. Today, the company abruptly announced the closure of the Future Shop chain, and the permanent closure of 66 of its remaining 131 locations. The remaining 65 Future Shop locations (specifically, those that weren't within driving, or even walking distance of a Best Buy to begin with) will be converted to Best Buy stores over the next few days.
This is just the latest step in Best Buy's efforts to downsize its Canadian operations and focus on online retail. The new, downsized chain will consist of 136 Best Buy stores (and 56 of the small Best Buy Mobile stores) in Canada. Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this.
This is just the latest step in Best Buy's efforts to downsize its Canadian operations and focus on online retail. The new, downsized chain will consist of 136 Best Buy stores (and 56 of the small Best Buy Mobile stores) in Canada. Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this.
FTA (Score:5, Insightful)
"stealing business?"
Really?
I want to buy certain items locally - like the Roccat Ryos MK Pro with blue switches, the ROG Swift monitor, and stuff like that. Best Buy doesn't stock them and I've got Amazon Prime, so why would I order from Worst Buy and wait 3-5 days for an item when I can get it next day for $3.99 shipping? (as far as why Best Buy doesn't stock the ROG Swift when they are among a very small handful of authorized retailers for that model, I have no idea.) I could drive 70 miles to Micro Center down in MA, but then I'd also have to pay sales tax. So, when I buy that monitor, I'm going to get it from Amazon.
Amazon sells MANY things brick-and-mortars don't any more. Want to find a good precision screwdriver set? I can't find a good set at Sears any more, nor Home Depot, nor Lowes, or smaller hardware stores, nor at Best Buy, or even harbor Freight. Sooo, where do I turn? Amazon.
Ass Kickin' ghost pepper hot sauce - I cannot find it anywhere local. So, where do I order that from? Amazon. Amazon stocks darn near everything you can imagine.
Re:FTA (Score:4, Informative)
Because Amazon Canada's selection is pretty terrible compared to Amazon USA. Best Buy sells the ROG Swift monitor for $900, with free shipping or local pickup. Amazon doesn't sell the monitor directly, has it for $1000, and doesn't offer free shipping at all (due to them not selling it directly).
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I could drive 70 miles to Micro Center down in MA, but then I'd also have to pay sales tax.
Implying, I guess, that he wouldn't pay sales tax if he ordered online. That's how it works in the US anyway.
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Exactly.
Amazon Canada is the whole reason why Canadian online shopping is such a terrible experience.
First off - Amazon Canada is NO CHEAPER than retail. I'd find stuff cheaper at Future Shop/Best Buy than at Amazon. Most Canadian retailers are like that - online prices generally aren't great - if you're savvy, you can find it available at the brick and mortar cheaper and available right there. And, save the shipping since few Cana
Re:FTA (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly.
Amazon Canada is the whole reason why Canadian online shopping is such a terrible experience.
First off - Amazon Canada is NO CHEAPER than retail. I'd find stuff cheaper at Future Shop/Best Buy than at Amazon. Most Canadian retailers are like that - online prices generally aren't great - if you're savvy, you can find it available at the brick and mortar cheaper and available right there. And, save the shipping since few Canadian retailers other than the big guys (Future Shop/Best Buy, Amazon, Walmart, etc) offer free shipping.
Amazon.ca does have some stuff that is cheaper. The problem is that Amazon.ca has next to nothing in comparison to Amazon.com. For example, my sister bought a high end ASUS laptop a few years back for about $200 cheaper on Amazon.ca than it was on Amazon.com. Also, my Dad bought some replacement batteries for his portable battery packs with free shipping for a better price than he could get them anywhere local and for a price similar to the Amazon.com prices. For the most part, though, it seems that Amazon.ca is a placeholder. It doesn't look like Amazon is serious yet about growing in Canada.
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I'm not talking about computer equipment, I'm talking about TVs, receivers, home theater equipment, headphones and the like. That's where they're losing most of the business to showrooming. And it's not just Amazon, there's a ton of other online sites to buy from after you go to Future Shop and see what you like.
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Home Depot carries the best little set I've owned:
http://www.homedepot.com/p/Hus... [homedepot.com]
I have probably bought half a dozen of them as they are super handy. If you take out the little plastic insert in the handle, you can put all the bits in the handle also.
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Yes, "stealing business". It's called showrooming, and there's even apps for that. You go down to the local Future Shop or Best Buy and kick the tires of whatever thing you were thinking of buying online but can't see before delivery and then when you find one you like you check its price on Amazon or wherever else and if it's cheaper online after shipping you make your purchase. Frequently you buy online and the retailer has now lost a sale to an online company despite being the one that showed you the
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i doubt it. amazon will still face competitive pressure. best buy is not a competitor to amazon. they're just increasingly irrelevant.
it's like saying that netflix would get more expensive without blockbuster video: totally irrelevant.
Re: FTA (Score:2)
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What part is doubtful? That people showroom? I've done it and so has everyone else I know.
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No, when Best Buy goes out of business, very likely Fry's will expand.
Best Buy sucks because they never stock the items I want - be it a television, high end AV receiver (for which which I went to a small family-owned hi fi shop), keyboards, monitors, video cards, speakers- you name it, Worst Buy tends to stock the low-to-mid range items, not high end.
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Amazon sells MANY things brick-and-mortars don't any more. Want to find a good precision screwdriver set? I can't find a good set at Sears any more, nor Home Depot, nor Lowes, or smaller hardware stores, nor at Best Buy, or even harbor Freight. Sooo, where do I turn? Amazon.
I'm an Amazon customer as well, but remember, Jeff Bezos is not your friend. Once Best Buy goes out of business, Amazon's prices for electronics will go up, just as their music prices went up after all of their big box competitors suddenly folded about eight years ago.
Jeff Bezos is a remarkable businessman. He is not your friend.
Maybe Not but I just got 1 Hour delivery. Amazon is the Sears of the 21st century. I don't care if Bezos spends his money or sub orbital craft and building a moon base. I'm happy.
Not a huge surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
The real surprise is why it took so long? 14 years is a heck of a long time to be running large redundant stores. From the parking lot of my local Future Shop, you could literally see the Best Buy store, and neither store was ever busy enough to really justify having two so close together, and I've heard that some were so close as to share a parking lot. It might be different if there were significant differences in the product lines they carried, but as it is it never really made much sense.
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It might be a local thing, but I've found that the Future Shop employees generally leave... sorry, left me alone unless I hunted one down and asked questions. The few times I bothered with Best Buy I either couldn't find an employee willing to answer questions or couldn't find the product I needed.
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I wouldn't be surprised if there was requirement like that... maybe 5 years on the outside. But 14 years?!? That's eons by corporate standards.
Brand names mean a lot in some places (Score:2)
Canadians might not say it or act like it, but they are quite nationalistic when it comes to brands and companies. What I've seen is that american brands have had trouble penetrating that market because preference goes to the incumbent local company. Target is struggling to gain acceptance, Canadian Tire is still the go-to, and even major e-tailers like Newegg have trouble over the other Canadian e-tailers. Hell, Sears seems to have won mindshare by having a little maple leaf in their Canadian logo. The
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There's a certain amount of truth there. But there are also counter-examples. Walmart, in particular, destroyed quite a bit of the competition (Woolco, K-Mart, Zellers, etc).
And then there's cross-border shopping...
Well, not anymore. The best I can determine is that Target's approach to the Canadian market was to push brand recognition,
Sorta sad, in a way (Score:2)
My wife and I bought our first television (way back in the pre-HD, pre-flatscreen days) from our local Future Shop - back when they were still in the U.S. Big 27" screen... darn thing weighed close to 100 pounds. Even when I was young, that thing was a bear to move single handed.
Wait - why are memories of that horrible old beast of a television making me feel nostalgic?
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I just went to BestBuy... (Score:2, Interesting)
Futureshop and BestBuy were literally on the same street, less than half a klick from eachother in my town. I never went to BestBuy because the one time I was there, the dumb blonde behind the counter berated me for buying the kind of keyboard I wanted.
Anyways, since Futureshop is closed now, I went to WorstBuy to see if I could get a 7200 rpm 2.5" HD, or an SSD of any kind. No SSD's anywhere, only 2 2.5" HD's, both 5400rpm. Crap... Then I passed by the cables because I needed a couple short ethernet cables
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Your mistake was going to Best Buy to find a cable. You're better off going to Princess Auto of all places to find cheap ethernet patch and HDMI cables. No hard drives though. And everything smells like smokey rubber.
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The check out line of Loblaws (Canadian grocery store chain) has better and cheaper HDMI cables than FS and BB and even they are overpriced @ $5 each but if you absolutely need an HDMI cable and a box of mini-wheats and don't feel like making two trips then you go with what's available. At FS and BB prices for cables, I absolutely would make a second trip to another store.
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*shudder* the worst thing you could ever do is buy compters hardware at a retail chain. Their margins are astronomical compared to the small very lean computer resailers that have been doing good business for many years. The only time I look at retail for computers is during boxing day / black friday, and even then its unlikely to convert a sale unless its been very discounted (and at least comparable to other shops prices).
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I used to buy all my hard drives and occasional RAM upgrades at FS and BB because of their price match policy. While they won't price match real computer stores directly (because real computer stores don't sell retail versions) occasionally one would have a sale where their prices were comparable or even better and then I'd go to whichever ones didn't have the sale and get their 110% price match.
Because of their astronomical markups, when one would actually sell something for real market prices, it wasn't
Kinda sucks (Score:2, Interesting)
I kind of liked Futureshop. They usually had what I wanted and the service wasn't too bad. Kind of fun wandering around when you're bored too.
A great band (The Sycamores of Halifax), which broke up years ago, even wrote a song about having nothing to do and going to Futureshop. Since The Sycamores are basically forgotten by the internet, here's the song, 'Future Shop Monday':
http://picosong.com/V2r8/ [picosong.com]
http://picosong.com/download/V2r8/ [picosong.com]
Good riddance: Worst Buy and Future Crap (Score:2)
Future Shop salespeople were pushy.
Best Buy had overpriced outdated items that could be bought far cheaper online.
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Well at the time (probably up till now), future shop staff were commision. That was one big diff between the two units.
If you want pushy, try visiting Visions. They make car salesmens and realtors look classy!
Future Shop an Iconic Brand!?!?... NOT! (Score:2)
I remember shopping at the original future shop to buy 5.25" Floppies and dealing with the pushy salespeople were not a good memory. Sure it was one of the few Canadian tech store brands, but definitely I'm not shedding any tears now that it's finally completely dead.
RIP Future Shop
Why do we allow these mergers? (Score:2)
Why do we allow these mergers in the first place? Oh yeah profit.
I hope you didn't mean Best Buy as an iconic brand (Score:2)
Unless you mean iconic in how they try to make the cheap TVs purposely look bad to sell the expensive ones, and then tack on a $7 HDMI cable that somehow rings up as $89.
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True, but the monopoly happened in 2001 when Best Buy bought Future Shop to begin with. Since then, they've been taking advantage of a public that was given the mistaken impression that there was some competition, when in fact there was none.
So perhaps this will ultimately be good for competition, as customers pissed off with one won't cross the street and go into the other. Instead, they can go down the block to Office Depot...
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We had Future Shop and about four other chains and a ouple of local stores. Then we got Best Buy as well, selling the same things as Future Shop, at the same prices. Now we have Best Buy and about four other chains and a couple of local stores. Hardly a 'monopoly'.
I buy most of my electronics from Amazon or one of the local stores. Future Shop was usually more expensive, and the staff clueless. I never understood why Best Buy kept them around.
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Yes. Here they call it Bureau en Gros, of course, but it's all very much of a muchness. My point is that whatever the sector, it turns out that there are several apparent retailers, but closer examination reveals that what's on offer is the same stuff, at nearly identical prices, and in fact has the same owners.
For that matter, many of the people here probably have (at least indirectly) small amounts of most of these companies in their 401Ks / IRAs / RRSPs / whatever.
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That was Business Depot not Office Depot. They weren't bought out they were the same company but there was an issue with trademarks so they couldn't call them staples. I guess at some point that got dealt with.
One of my first job was working at the East end Business Depot in the early 90's right behind Future Shop.
Want to know where they are burying FS as I want to piss on their grave. Oh the stories I could tell about their lack of ethics (let alone skeevy sales practices)....
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It wasn't too hard to know they were the same business - plenty of stock at future shop had best buy shipping labels on them.
Every once in a while, future shop would drop the price on something, so you could go to best buy and get it at that price minus a few percent by bringing the ad.
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I never had that problem. In fact, they seemed to consider it a special case where they'd beat each other's prices immediately without any hassle because they didn't want to be called out on being the same store.
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I shopped at both (since the FS and BB closest to me are full sized stores 30 feet from each other) and always got them to price match. They don't price match open box or liquidation items (which most other price match policies don't either) but for everything else I never had an issue.
I routinely got them to price match each other since they often staggered their sales so an item on sale at FS one week would be on sale at BB the next. Besides the extra 10% off the price match gave, it saved me having to r
Re:Economy (Score:5, Interesting)
Big retail chains are doomed. They can't compete on price with online stores, and they can't compete on service with local stores who don't have to send most of their profits to the stock market. This has little or nothing to do with Harper, unless you believe a more left-wing government would have nationalized Future Shop to keep it open.
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To be fair I bought a TV a few weeks back from FutureShop because I wanted to compare picture quality myself. In the end, not only was FutureShop cheaper than the local retailers, it was $50 cheaper than Amazon.
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Certain kinds of products are moving online. But I have a feeling the electronic retail stores are making their money on selling refrigerators, freezers, washing machines, dishwashers, TVs and everything else too big to fit an ordinary parcel. A lot of other goods are selling on look and feel where people want to see the actual product in person, I got burned on this before Christmas when I bought something that... I mean all the specs and images were correct, but it was just underwhelming in reality. I cer
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Depends on the market.
My job at Home Depot is probably more threatened by the current management's obsession with cutting labor costs then larger market conditions.
Lots of people, including contractors, would rather go a store with six locations in the County that has everything they need, with better then 50% chance of having a guy who can warn them about the tricky bits; then buy from a company with no locations in Cuyahoga County; or buy from a location with a 100% chance of having that smart guy on the
You can only buy shit with debt for so long... (Score:2)
Take a look at the bigger picture with the canadian economy. We never really had the same sort of crash as the americans in 2008. The middle and upper classes were insulated by artificially low interest rates and the encouragement to start flipping more and more property. Harper and his cronies dropped interest rates so low, and screwed with the housing market so much that the entire economy is now built on debt, subprime mortgages and oil.Oil is down for the count, people simply cannot take out more mortga
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Canada Post, Fedex, and UPS all have freight divisions or subsidiaries who would be happy to ship a pallet of dirt for you.
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Just for those curious, you CAN get dirt shipped in very big plastic/kevlar bags that are strapped to pallets. This is similar to the way certain heavy (coffee being one that is just starting to move to this) food shipments are being handled. Of course, it does require a heavy loader, flat bed, straps for the flat bed, and roads improved enough (and all year enough if its not summer and dry) to get your shipment to you. These bags can even be air lifted by CH-47 helicopter (I believe it can carry up to 2 of
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Thats a lie, sometimes I go to simply try a new product demo or something
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Apparently yes, even the original poster seems very sad to see them disappear as the end of his summary let us think:
"Still, it's sad to see such an iconic brand killed off like this."
I suspect he is an employee of Past Shop. I really don't see what Past Shop has to do with news for nerds. Any nerd is going at Past Shop for a fix? I am not aware of any. This is a last resort solution when you need a gizmo widely available and you need it NOW.
Re:Best buy (Score:4, Interesting)
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Actually no.
I just hate it when U.S. companies have to barge into Canada and throw perfectly good brands in the Recycle Bin like that. Our country is too Americanized. But I too am shocked that they allowed this redundancy to last so long, plus how abrupt it was.
Thank you for perpetuating the old joke that the Canadian national identity is based on Maple Syrup, Hockey, and 'not being America.'
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Actually talking to enough people from outside Canada including the US and Europe, Canada's identity is built from exesive passive-aggressiveness stemming from an inferiority complex and easily identifiable by the guy who keeps saying "I'm not American"
Re:Best buy (Score:4, Interesting)
Really? Nothing that's distinctly Canadian? Did you see the closing ceremonies for the Vancouver Olympics? My wife and I watched both the Canadian and American coverage. The announcer on the Canadian coverage was happily chatting away about the festivities, whereas the American announcer was pretty much speechless, because what he was seeing was so not American.
We're a hell of a lot friendlier and more polite than Americans, in general. Not that there aren't exceptions; there certainly are. But on the whole, it's true. I've traveled a fair amount through Canada, various parts of the US, and some in Europe. I've never felt uncomfortable or out of place, except in the US. Now, that was mostly in the north east, as when I went through Tennessee, people were almost as friendly as Canadians. Americans just seem to be more blunt and "in your face" than pretty much anybody else I've encountered in my travels.
Besides: we have Red Green.
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traveled
And we can spell.
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traveled
And we can spell.
Oooh. I missed one repeated letter while typing on a netbook minikeyboard, so I must be completely wrong about absolutely everything.
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And I used to love Canadian Tire. But that was, what, 40 years ago? Will have to look online to see if they still exist...
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And I used to love Canadian Tire. But that was, what, 40 years ago? Will have to look online to see if they still exist...
Canadian Tire still exists, is still popular, and has been growing revenue. I don't know where you live, but most Canadians still shop at Canadian Tire. I'm thinking that you're a bit out of touch.
I go home to NB during the summer for a couple of weeks and always end up having to go to Canadian Tire for something for the boat, camp, etc.
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Still exists but is a shadow of what it was. Used to be a decent place for autoparts, now it is pretty much a walmart with a small section that sells crap auto parts. Waiting for them to change their name to CT or something that less identifies them as a tire centre.
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I dont normally shop for car parts, but when I needed a new car battery this year, the canadian tire car battery was pretty much always rated the best.
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What, do you live in Nunavut? Canadian tire is everywhere. I still go by the saying "if it ain't in the flyer, don't but it at the tire" as their regular price on a lot of items (especially their in-house mastercraft bran)d is ridiculous, but then they always have 50-75% off sales.
Their return policy is very good, and never had issues.
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We tried Annexing countless times. Literally. I can't count the times. Once during the Revolution, once during the War of 1812, another time in the 1830s when our Marshall in Detroit "accidentally" let Canadian rebels "borrow" the entire contents of the arsenal, numerous times in the late 1860s when the Fenians tried to conquer Canada...
They've always been quite adamant that they are quite happy to be her Majesty's Unamerican subjects.
And you're highly exaggerating our originality. The US System is precisel
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"British system of 1789," so any present tense discussion of the British government is irrelevant.
And yes, in 1789 the Brits had a an upper chamber selected by the groups intended to run the nation (the House of Lords) and a frequently re-elected lower House that was intended to be the voice of the People (the Commons). The Upper was supposed to cool the relatively hot tempers of the lower, veto any attempts to replace the elite by popular vote, and generally wear the man pants.
The differences between Senat
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It was a great place to shop if you needed an extended warranty.
It was never a great place to shop, it was a pain trying to get them to honour said warranties, and Best Buy stores were infinitely more friendly/useful due to the non-commission status of employees.
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The best buy employees around my neck of the woods are complete and total idiots. Especially the Geek Squad rocket scientists or whatever they are supposed to be. It's a chore to even enter the store it seems. I've had both (the blue shirts and black shirts) try to tell me crap I knew from the start simply wasn't true. I think the funniest story was when I was purchasing some CDs for my burner and was trying to make sure I was getting the brand on sale. One of the employees saw me and tried to suggest I pur
Re: Best buy (Score:4, Insightful)
They're minimum wage employees for the most part, what do you expect? At least when they say something stupid you know it's out of ignorance. Future Shop (pre-and post bestbuy) they would lie to your face just to try get you to buy something you didn't need.
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I expect either a level of competency in looking the answers up or level of humility and just saying "I don't know" when they do not know. But I'm not sure where the difference is in lieing to your face to sell something and ignorantly lieing just to up sell something.
Here is another great example of an experience I had with Best Buy. I was looking for a specific US robotics hardware modem and their website said they had one in stock. This was for an old linux box that served as a fax server using hylafax a
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Their level of knowledge is very inconsistent, some know some stuff but for the most part they're just CSRs like any other chain. Go in expecting to know the shit for yourself and only expect them to be able to locate the general area where you might find something. Beyond that, go to a non-chain store where they have to know the products for themselves.
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I generally stopped shopping at FS due to the commission-based sales vultures, but I did buy a stove and fridge there almost 3 years ago (needed new ones, and they had a good sale going on). Huge amount of pressure to get extended warranties, of course. I started asking about it, having had previous (negative) experience trying to actually use a warranty.
Basically, the extended warranty was 3 / 5 / 8 years depending on what you paid. If something breaks, you call them, they come out and repair or replace at
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I liked the commission based sales, because it just meant you could get a better deal on a TV. They would often give up parts of their commission to make the sale
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Then I buy them online from a retailer that charges at least 30% less (usually Amazon) and doesn't grill me for a half hour when I have to return something their employees broke tossing boxes around.
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Most middle-class Canadians have been, or are being, forced down to a Wal-Mart level of existence.
That'll be why our street is full of new trucks and SUVs. They need them to drive to Wal-Mart, I guess.
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Most middle-class Canadians have been, or are being, forced down to a Wal-Mart level of existence.
That'll be why our street is full of new trucks and SUVs. They need them to drive to Wal-Mart, I guess.
Yes, and you will note, they are not purchases, but two family incomes paying a lease.
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Seems to me those fancy trucks and SUVs you speak of may perhaps belong to the upper class? I think your confusing the 150K+ a year crowd with the middle class.
Middle class is more of a median income between that and the poverty line, most of the 30-60K people aren't out driving around in new 60K+ vehicles, most of us are the ones in the crappy older vehicles. and the rest are the ones on the bus
Seems kind of unlikely. At least where I live, the upper crust drives fancy sedans. The lower class drives fancy trucks and SUVs and the middle class drives cheap econoboxes.
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The American economy is predicated on the idea that your home, your food, and your clothing should be made of cheap garbage so that you can spend all your available income on fuel-guzzling oversized vehicles and glamour electronics.
All of which become obsolete and/or wear out fairly quickly, as traditional wealth measures go.
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And the really smart people have done the math, and bought a fairly used but still reliable vehicle (ie: closer to $5k then $10k), that's gets at least 30 MPG. They maintain it at the dealer because they know he's only going to screw them over on the official bill; rather then screwing them over by trying to use plumbing parts in a car*. Then they drive it for at least a decade.
The easiest way to lose $3k a year every year forever is insist on having a recent-model $30k vehicle in your driveway at all times
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It's quite common to deal with macho men in Fort Mac who work in the oil sands for days on end with heavy machinery, yet who have penises that are most appropriately measured in millimetres.
If size is an issue in that region, why don't you look somewhere else for your fill of penises?
Re:The Canadian middle class is dying out. (Score:4, Informative)
First of all, this is the norm among industrialized economies. Perhaps Norway is different. I haven't checked since the fracking boom.
Second, the thriving middle class was a fairly short lived affair, centered around three decades from 1950–1980. Most affluent societies have now returned to pre-1930s levels of economic inequality. Historically, an affluent middle class is the exception and not the norm.
I had a college roommate whose brawny younger brother dropped out of high school with few skills and somehow got a job with the CAW at a starting wage north of $70,000 per year, back in the early 1980s. He soon had a wife and children, a driveway filled with expensive motor toys, and cash-flow problems.
He was almost certainly employed at a factory making automotive products that discerning consumers—those of us lacking misty-eyed Big Three loyalty—did not wish to purchase.
Meanwhile, high school drop-outs trying to scrape by on non-union wages weren't necessarily doing much better than those same people today, a major difference being that the majority of those fantasy union jobs have now gone away.
Someone needs to get in a time travel booth to go back to the early 1970s to inform the CAW management group that no matter what course of action they chose, their business model (high union wages for semi-skilled labour) could not survive selling shit product. Marketing the hell out shit product was a short-term solution at best (Future Shop—ultimately—not excepted).
As much as the Reagan and Thatcher plutocrats initiated a self-serving destruction of the middle class, the middle class itself was hardly blameless.
Now it's time for the plutocrats to determine whether they can recognize how they are painting themselves into a non-viable corner before they encounter a messy corrective force of their own seeding.
Beware, fellow plutocrats, the pitchforks are coming [ted.com]
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You blame the union members and the unions.
You blame them when the decision to sell shit products and ignore quality issues was an upper management problem, and remains to an upper management problem to this day.
Because if that responsibility doesn't lie with upper management, then why do they get paid fucking rockstar salaries? What do they do all day, financial masturbation?
--
BMO
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The Canadian middle class is being crushed out of existence. NAFTA has played a big role in this, as it resulted in much manufacturing draining directly to Mexico. Subsequent trade agreements have not helped. At the same time, there has been a huge flood of immigrants, most of them from third-world nations. The lack of work, combined with a large population increase, has resulted in higher levels of unemployment, along with higher housing prices.
Middle-class stores, including large and long-established chains, are closing throughout Canada at an astounding pace. Zellers is gone. Target never really got off the ground. Sears is on its way out. Many of the mid-sided clothing stores have gone under lately, are in the process of going under, or are just about to.
The middle-class retailers that have survived so far have often done so only by dropping their quality levels, or moving into higher-end goods. There is a stunning degree of economic polarization: either you are quite wealthy, or you are very poor. This is a huge change from what the country was once like, when it had a robust middle class. Most middle-class Canadians have been, or are being, forced down to a Wal-Mart level of existence.
The same holds true for the USA. However, regarding BestBuy, I have no tears for them. They were usually a "list price + 50%" business. As an example, I bought hdmi cables (6foot lengths) for $3.00 each, BB's price was $39.95ea. I purchased several "wireless mouse"s at $6.00ea, BB was $25.95 for the same product.
So, if you are seeing desktops at $1000, when they should be retailing at $550.00, you know the reason why. Its called "what the market will bear+10%"
As competition becomes stronger, BB will hav
Re: The Canadian middle class is dying out. (Score:4, Informative)
Almost a million dollars (CDN) for any decent-sized house that isn't a dump.
You must have only looked in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. Anything upwards of about $600,000 in the London area gets you an absolute mansion.
As an example: 4 bedrooms, 4 1/2 bathrooms, a huge lot, inground pool, 2 car garage, tons of landscaping, fountains, etc, for $715,000.
http://www.realtor.ca/propertyDetails.aspx?PropertyId=15394802 [realtor.ca]
If that place qualifies as either a dump, or too small, then you have no right to bitch about the price of property, because you must pretty much be a 1%er.
Take a look at the $700,000 - $800,000 range:
http://www.realtor.ca/Map.aspx#CultureId=1&ApplicationId=1&RecordsPerPage=9&MaximumResults=9&PropertyTypeId=300&TransactionTypeId=2&SortOrder=A&SortBy=1&LongitudeMin=-81.48207731193361&LongitudeMax=-81.01035184806642&LatitudeMin=42.886606758167304&LatitudeMax=43.087019589728655&PriceMin=700000&PriceMax=800000&BedRange=0-0&BathRange=0-0&ParkingSpaceRange=0-0&viewState=m&Longitude=-81.24621458&Latitude=42.98689485&ZoomLevel=11&CurrentPage=1 [realtor.ca]
There are plenty of huge houses, 3 car garages, etc, in there.
If you want to look at the more realistic for most people range of $300,000 to $400,000:
http://www.realtor.ca/Map.aspx#CultureId=1&ApplicationId=1&RecordsPerPage=9&MaximumResults=9&PropertyTypeId=300&TransactionTypeId=2&SortOrder=A&SortBy=1&LongitudeMin=-81.48207731193361&LongitudeMax=-81.01035184806642&LatitudeMin=42.886606758167304&LatitudeMax=43.087019589728655&PriceMin=300000&PriceMax=425000&BedRange=0-0&BathRange=0-0&ParkingSpaceRange=0-0&viewState=m&Longitude=-81.24621458&Latitude=42.98689485&ZoomLevel=11&CurrentPage=1 [realtor.ca]
You'll still find plenty of very nice houses in there, too.
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Anything upwards of about $600,000 in the London area gets you an absolute mansion.
That's what happens when an entire region relies on Blackberry.
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thats waterloo region not london. And waterloo prices are still going up.
Blackberry is not the only tech company in waterloo. Google is building a masssive office
Then we have a bunch of other hightech firms such as comdev, opentext, toyota
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Yeah sorry, Future Shop practices were questionable before Best Buy bought them out. Once they did 99% of the stuff they carried were identical with maybe one or two things differing between them in each apartment. Surprised this didn't happen before.
One of my early jobs was working in a Business Depot and we heard and (I personally) experienced some of the crap they were pulling. An example was I had the floor model of a computer for sale and had a customer come in. He seemed interested and was going to bu
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Can you list said stores that offered different products? Because the ones in my neck of the woods in London and Kitchener all had the same stuff in them. In some cases, those stores were right next door to each other or less than 500m away. They had amazing amount of redundancy.
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That would be the reason why then, different ends of the country different market demands. They're all the same here in Southern Ontario, which is rather silly.
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What was once Radio Shack in Canada is still operating today. They're called "The Source" today, and they're just as bad as Radio Shack ever was, with terrible selection and insane prices. I never see anybody in the stores, so I don't really understand how they're still operating. I'd say they were a mob front (my normal explanation when a store or restaurant stays open despite having no customers) except they're owned by Bell Canada these days.
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s/except/because/ strikes me as more accurate.
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Radio shack was a competitor because they turned into a Mobile phone shop and best buy has their own mobile phone stores.
Circuit City is long dead. The brand was bought and the domain used to sell things, but the real chain is long dead. What next, you going to mention montgomery wards?
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I go when my deal site says BestBuy has the best deal on the item I need at that moment. Many retailers dabble (loss leaders) in areas they are not normally competitive in. The deal sites pick up on this, and people like myself benefit.
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This was also true where I grew up. They opened a Best Buy there more than a decade ago, right across the street from a Future Shop. They've been operating like that ever since. I can imagine it's one of the places that they're going to close the future shop, even though it's a better location (smaller mall, easier access, bigger store) than the Best Buy.
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In a new shopping centre in my city they opened a Best Buy and a Future Shop. Wat? They had a Best Buy and Future Shop ten minutes up the Trans-Canada and then a three-minute drive from each other. Oversaturation, just slightly.
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In one of the stores which is closing, there as a Best Buy and a Future Shop right across the street. So you shop at one and then go across a crosswalk to the other one.
They've always had mostly the same stock, and at mostly the same price.
I'm told the difference was Future Shop had commissioned (and therefore more annoying) salesman, while Best Buy wasn't on commission. I often found hard to get items were more likely to be stocked at Future Shop instead of Best Buy.
Many of us have always thought it quit
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...those that weren't within driving, or even walking distance...
Strange phrasing.
Not really. The Future Shop near me was not in the same parking lot as a Best Buy, but it was just a short 2 minute drive from one. As you've seen, some of these pairs were located within the same mall.