Good Guys stores closing (1 Viewer)

I unfortunately read last night that CompUSA has decided to close all remaining Good Guys locations. This leaves my area with only Best Buy and Circuit City stores and neither one carries the same type of high end electronics that The Good Guys stores do. I have been a customer of the local Good Guys store since it opened in the early 1990's and will miss the place once it's gone.

The stores that are still open are supposed to be liquidating their inventories over the next 60 days so I would assume that there are bargains to be found.

Anyway, here are the details:


Here are a few articles about the stores closing:
It's bad news for Good Guys workers
Good Guys to close stores
Good Guys Closing: What You Should Know

The one in my town abruptly shut down a couple months ago. I heard people were waiting outside and everything, oblivious to the fact. I for one will not miss it. It had horrible service and management. Unfortunately its abrupt closure meant no liquidation sales.

I had much better luck with the Good Guys store near me (Montclair, CA). The sales staff that I encountered were always very polite and quite knowledgeable about the products that they sold. There was (probably still is for now) a salesman in the audio department that really knew his stuff and seemed to be an enthusiast himself. I'll have to go check out the store at least one more time and see if there might be any worthwhile bargains to be had.

I found another article about the demise of The Good Guys that was interesting:
Changing Consumer Habits Spurred Demise of Good Guys

Particularly this paragraph:
Is it really true that young people don't sit around listening to stereos anymore? When I was in high school back in the 80's, my friends and I would spend hours listening to records and then later CDs on our stereo systems. I was quite pleased with myself being able to build an impressive component stereo system piece by piece using each Christmas and birthday for about 3 years to add something new. I don't see how an iPod or other mp3 player could give someone the same experience. I guess things change.

Checked out the GG in Torrence and I'd describe their steep discounts as a non-event.

The alleged retail prices marked on items were grotesquely high. (A Sony HDTV that retails now for $1800 was marked $2499!) and the markdowns were only in the 10-30% range (so that Sony HDTV was $1699. Big deal. I can do better at --ugh -- Best Buy.)

Perhaps in a few days the deals will be better, but at that store, at least, they thought they were going to get us to play the boob's game.

In the event, it was another chance for The Good Guys to remind us why we aren't going to be sorry to see them go.

You're not much older than I am and I don't really recall doing that when I was a teenager. Music was an important thing, but it seemed like we mostly listened to it in cars and with walkmans.

In terms of 'mass-market' electronics stores, Good Guys was the best. You simply couldn't find products of the quality of Parasound Halo seperates and Monitor Audio Gold Reference speakers at your neighborhood Circuit City or Best Buy. Like Todd, I also frequented the Montclair GG, bought many products from them and those guys were knowledgeable about audio in a way that you'd never get from BB or CC. The deals weren't so great, but they offered a great financing program. Too bad. :frowning:

I was in GG once (just across from tweeter) in San Diego. Asked the salesperson what price he could sell a T.V. for, and after pausing for a moment he just pointed to the listed price. Thats all I needed to know, I went to tweeter and got a much better deal.

I am willing to bet that they will gradually increase the discounts over the next several weeks. I was working at Builders Emporium in Rancho Cucamonga in 1993 when that chain closed down. The discounts started at 10% and increased about once a week by an additional 10% until it was all the way up to 80% off at the end. Of course most of the merchandise started to disappear at the 30%-40% mark so there was very little left the last couple of weeks.

Good Guys carried DIVX, and in fact threatened to fire any employees who said a single bad thing about it. Other than that they were still a better store than BB or CC, but that ain't saying much. At least the other 2 stores have movies and music to get you into the store even if you're not looking to buy electronics.

CompUSA the last place I'd think of going to buy a new TV though! It's a computer store!

I only used GG for speaker cable and connectors. I didn't like the store and it was always empty. I got the impression the staff only worked there so they could get employee discounts to trick out their cars.

There'd be no one in the store yet all the parking stalls closest to the door were taken by cars taking up multiple spaces and parked at an angle like it was being shown off.

There's no GG where I now live and when I went looking for ribbon/flat speaker cable all I got were stares -- even at the A/V stores.

-paul

I would not look for any really great deals on things because from what I've seen lately on going out of business sales is that they will reduce the open box stuff sometime up to 30% off the last few weeks on beat up stuff & when most of the stuff has been cleaned out at 10% to 20% off the rest of the stuff will all be sold off to the highest bidders in bulk, returned to the manufactures for credit or returned to their own warehouses to be sent to other stores.

I remember when a large discount store in my area went out of business & I din't really see anything I wanted but I figured I would stock up on some little items like batteries & etc when they got down to 50% off.

One week I went in & batteries were 10% off, and they had 100s of them, & the next week when I went in there wasn't a battery in the store & a clerk told me that an outside outfit had come in & taken all of them along with a lot of other items that they had won the bids on.

So don't expect too much but every once in awhile you can snag something at these store closings that turns out to be a real deal, but not very often.

Best Buy now has Magnolia HiFi in their stores around here, which is their "high end" store chain that they purchased about 2 years ago. Not sure if that is the same in your area, but it probably will be soon; all of the ones around here now have a special Magnolia area.

I always hated Good Guys, but I did get some good deals there. The best deal I ever got was on their double the difference campaign. Another company had advertised a set of speakers that were $99/pr at GG for $40 less than their in store price, so with the difference, I ended up getting the speakers for $18 out the door brand new. They've been on the bubble for years now, and they pretty much didn't offer anything of much use to me. Their prices were as high or higher than most other places, and much of their staff were less than knowledgeable, around here anyway. Gear was decent, but lousy staff and prices still didn't make that attractive.


You can order it online at any number of places, and most likely cheaper anyway.

I haven't seen that section in any of the three Best Buys that I frequent yet (Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino, and Montclair). I have read about it though and look forward to seeing what Magnolia has to offer.

I stopped by the Montclair Good Guys on Sunday afternoon and you'd hardly know that they were having a going out of business sale. The parking lot was pretty much empty and there were probably only a handful of people in the store. Most audio and video gear was 10% off and it looked like all of the car audio was 20% off.

My buddy went by the nearest one too and said the same thing. Initial markdowns are not that impressive, but once they start advertising the sale, I'd expect to see a lot more people browsing there and toward the end, bigger discounts on remaining items.

Magnolia carries some decent stuff compared to BB: http://www.magnoliahifi.com/selection/

Unfortunately, this may be the path other high end stores may take. The true audiophile could be a dying breed. This very day I take the time to listen to a good two channel stereo track in the basement. I just turn off the surrounds, sit dead center and close my eyes. Only a few like Marvin Gaye DTS I listen to in it's 5.1 surround sound, but the other jazz get's two channels. One of the major reasons why I bought the Platinum Audio Speakers. Shame though, those type of stores usually have the best set up for listening and in some cases viewing. :frowning:

I've been a Good Guys shopper since about 1980. Its a shame to see them go because they always offered better equipment than Circuit City and Best Buy. Back when I was living in SoCal in 80's and 90's it was Good Guys,CC, Ken Crane's, Rogersound Labs and Pacific Stereo. Oh yeah, also Federated and the crazy commercials. Leo's Stereo was always the bargain outfit.

I don't remember GG pushing Divx. It was Circuit City, I even remember the CC TV ads pushing it. One thing I do remember about GG in Montclair, the salesman was the first one to warn me about Bose cubes around 1991. He played the Bose cubes and then took me into a room with Polk satellites. It was no comparison, the Polks were much better. I've purchased TV's, minidisc players, my first DVD player, first 2 AV Receivers, CD carousels, Energy speakers, car stereos and VCRs from Good Guys.

I was in the Concord GG a month or so ago listening to Monitor Audio Silvers. Maybe if I wait a few weeks, I'll be able to get them for dirt cheap.

I've always liked wandering around GG due to the higher end equipment that they carried (compared to BB and CC), but I never really bought anything there because their prices were pretty outragous.

I have one local in Riverside, I'll have to stop by and see what their clearance looks like this week.

I'm not positive but I think the store in Riverside was one of several that closed the day they made the announcement.

Riverside store is already closed.

http://www.goodguys.com/closed.htm

That's a bummer - I've been meaning to stop by myself and check-out the clearance sale.

I'll always have special memories of the Riverside Good Guys store. I bought my first DVD player and first surround sound set-up there on 12/06/1997. That first DVD player (Sony DVP-S3000) is still going strong as my bedroom DVD player.

Good Bye Good Guys.