Learning from Failure

Learning from Failure Circuit City used to be the nation’s number one leading electronics retail store. Even when the company finally decided to call it quits, they were still considered to be the number two electronics retailer. But it came as no surprise to consumers, corporate America and Wall Street after trading was halted when stocks reached .10 cents per share and CC filed for bankruptcy in late 2008. Circuit City claimed the United States’ economic crisis was to blame but the company had been suffering for almost a decade. To start off, the location of its stores seemed to be more trouble than it was worth for the consumer. After all, by the 1990’s Wal-Mart had become nationally acclaimed for its one-stop shopping capabilities which shot the company to number one status for all retailers in the United States. CC’s complacency to uproot its locations left consumers high-tailing it to the nearest Wal-Mart rather than wasting their time trying to figure out where the nearest Circuit City store was located. Additionally, the company had serious issues with inventory management as well as poor customer support. A retail consultant named Helen Bulwick of New Market Solutions said Circuit City was “unable to move their inventory.” And Anita Hamilton of Time Business said that fatal mistake caused a “backlog [which] left the company paralyzed” (2008). Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of complaints were being filed by consumers all across the nation regarding the company’s customer service department which was brought on by CC’s decision to release several thousand high-paid and highly trained agents only to replace them with $7 per hour incompetent twerps whose biggest decision of the day was what they would do when break time rolled around. It may also come as no shock to know that CC’s CEO Phillip Schrooner who was the final decision maker to layoff those 3,400 employees in order to ‘save the company some money’, received $7 million