US Big Box stores go to the wall

TWO OUT OF MY THREE Big Boxes have been bloodied over the past two weeks, leaving the third in a happy-happy/joy-joy position.

CompUSA is pulling the plug on a total of 126 out of 229 stores. According to the company line, "Based on changing conditions in the consumer retail electronics market, the company identified the need to close and sell stores with low performance or non-strategic, old-store layouts and locations faced with market saturation."

Oh, yes, and they're also going to take a $440 million cash injection from their Mexico-based parent to improve their balance sheet. That's not even funny. Do the math, and they're going to drop in over $4 million per store for the surviving 103 stores.

Washington D.C. has more than its share of high-tech workers and geeks buying hardware. Overnight, I have gone from having four stores within 10-15 of my house to the closest ones being located in Columbia, MD (38 miles), Towson MD (57 miles) and Richmond, VA (79 miles). Columbia, MD is within a stone's throw of the National Security Agency, so there's a sort of logic there, but ditching all four stores in Northern Virginia doesn't make any kind of sense.

Like the rest of the vultures, er, bargain shoppers, I drove over to now-closing closest CompUSA to check out the alleged bargains. Big signs are advertising 10 to 40 percent off, and "Everything must go, including furnishings," so if I want to buy a set of employee lockers or the microwave oven out of the break room, I can.

However, even in death, CompUSA is still trying to rip me off one last time. While you can get 10 to 15 percent off of disk drives and RAM, there aren't any other manufacturer discounts so most shoppers are going to be better off waiting for the Best Buy/Circuit City discount flyer cycle and get a better deal Gee, 30 percent off of iPod accessories! Price on a new Lexmark color laser printer with out-of-biz discount within about $5-10 of the price I'd pay from ordering direct from Lexmark's website - and I can return my purchase to Lexmark; all sales FINAL through CompUSA.

According to the remaining sales people, they expect to be employed for another month until the remaining inventory is gone. I suspect some of the inventory will likely be shipped up to Columbia in bulk, because they aren't going to sell it off at the current discounts. I'll be going back a couple of times to see if the discounts become more aggressive, but I'm skeptical.

Meanwhile, Circuit City put the axe to 3400 employees making "More than market wages." The roughly 8.4 percent of the allegedly overpaid can reapply for their jobs in 90 days at half (yes, half) of their existing salary - assuming they would be desperate enough to reapply and assuming the jobs aren't already filled by some inexperienced grunt either willing to work hard enough to ultimately get fired for making too much money or working just enough to keep the boss happy without desiring a pay raise.

Hmm, let's see, we fire our most experienced employees, hire new staff at half price, and expect that our sales won't be impacted in a short-term or long term basis. I suppose the big irony here is the soon-to-be-unemployed CompUSA types can apply for the open Circuit City positions and then end up driving away as many Circuit City customers as they did CompUSA customers.

About the only happy Big Boxes are Best Buy and WalMart. Analysts are attributing WalMart's buying and marketing power as undercutting HDTV sales at other Big Boxes. Best Buy bought Speakeasy for $97 million in cash and is currently considering letting their employees just walk in when they want to work, rather than setting them to a fixed schedule. µ