Electronics retail
For half a century, buying electronics meant walking into a store and asking someone. These chains were built on that conversation, and lost it to big boxes, carriers and the internet.
Post-mortems in Electronics retail
RadioShack
1921 – 2015
Once a store within a short drive of almost every American. It kept the stores long after the reason to visit them had moved online.
Circuit City
1949 – 2009
It invented the electronics superstore and spun off CarMax. Then it dropped appliances, fired its best-paid salespeople and met the 2008 credit crisis with no cushion.
CompUSA
1984 – 2008
The first chain of computer superstores sold $6.3 billion of PCs a year at its height. Then the PC turned into a cheap commodity that Best Buy, Dell and everyone else sold too.
hhgregg
1955 – 2017
A family appliance store from Indianapolis that went public in 2007 and doubled its store count on flat-screen TVs. Its comparable-store sales fell every year from 2009, and the chain was liquidated in 2017.
Sharper Image
1977 – 2008
A San Francisco gadget catalog that became a mall fixture. By 2004 its Ionic Breeze air purifiers were 40% of revenue; when Consumer Reports panned them and sales fell away, the chain went bankrupt in 2008.