Posts Tagged ‘retail’

The greatest band on Planet Earth will rock you Saturday, Feb. 7 at the Freakin' Frog. Can you afford to miss it?

1. Shop for cancer research. Recession be damned, Juicy Couture is opening a new retail location in the Forum Shops at Caesars Palace. And if you shop at the 4,800-square-foot boutique during opening weekend this Thursday through Sunday (Feb. 5 to 8), Juicy will donate 10 percent of your well-spent cash to the Nevada Cancer Institute.
2. Feed a starving artist. First Friday is this week, but as usual, real art lovers know the good stuff happens the day before. So get your fill of the best local, national and international art on Thursday, Feb. 5 with an opening reception at Trifecta Gallery, a closing reception at Naomi Arin Contemporary Art and the two-year anniversary of Danny Roberts’ Damned Ink Studios.
3. Get drunk for public television. We all grew up watching Sesame Street, Electric Company and 3-2-1 Contact, and we’re much better human beings for it. So help ensure the next generation of boob-tubers has the same opportunity and get yourself liquored up at the same time at Southern Nevada Public Television’s 20th Annual Splendor in the Glass Benefit Wine & Beer Tasting on Saturday, Feb. 7 at the Las Vegas Hilton.
4. Channel your inner groupie. What better way to cap off your Saturday night than with live, original rock ‘n’ roll and the largest selection of beers this side of the Mississippi? I don’t know. So be at the Freakin’ Frog at 10 p.m. to catch Think, Fractured and As Yet Unbroken — yes, that last one is my band, and you will love it. If you don’t, you hate America and the terrorists win.

I guess they've been short-Circuited, huh? Ha, I know, I am genius.

By now, you should be well aware of Circuit City’s pending complete and total shutdown in these fine United States of America (for some reason, the company’s Canadian operations are staying open, for now). That’s 30,000 people about to lose their jobs in 567 U.S. branches of the 60-year-old electronics retailer. Almost immediately after officially announcing the closures, the stores began running liquidation sales. And not surprisingly, the allegedly struggling American consumers flocked to Circuit City to get their grubby hands on what had to be fire sale deals.

But the deals suck. I went on the Saturday after the liquidation announcement to the location at Sahara Avenue and Decatur Boulevard. Sure enough, the store was probably busier than it had been in years. However, after perusing the aisles for things I really didn’t need (I came looking for a Wacom Intuos graphic tablet, y’know, just in case), it occurred to me Circuit City’s prices weren’t very competitive. Even with 10 percent overall and slightly varying discounts in different departments, it seems as though all these shoppers would have been better off going to Wal-Mart or Target or even Best Buy. When you couple high prices with what I’ve read about increasingly bad/sparse customer service over the years, well, it’s no wonder that the venerable retailer found itself in big financial trouble. I mean, you don’t see Best Buy on the bankruptcy block, do you?

I went to a different location this week, figuring it’s been another week, maybe the liquidation prices are dropping. Nope. There were some killer deals on open box items, but there are always open box bargains in electronics stores. Maybe it’s good that the company’s liquidators aren’t shoving items out the door too quickly. After all, the sooner the stores sell out their inventory, the sooner they shutter the doors and Circuit City employees find themselves out on the street. Is it any surprise that Circuit City employees wear red shirts?

Is it 50 percent less douchey?

Hey, even douchebags have to sleep, right? I mean, at the end of a long day spent reading Maxim, waxing your chest and driving your Mustang down to Town Square for happy hour at Blue Martini, you have to put your gelled, frosted head of hair down to rest somewhere, right?

Better hurry up and get down to Dillard’s at the Fashion Show mall, where this slammin’ Ed Hardy bedding set is now 50 percent off! That’s right — you can have the ultimate in douchey bedroom accessories and save some dough for that new scent of Axe Body Spray that just came out!

Alas, Mervyn's, we shopped you well

When I was a younger lad — and by younger I mean living at a time when a Reagan was president and a Jackson ruled the charts — my mother would take my brother and me to Mervyn’s when back-to-school shopping season rolled around. Actually, I’m not sure if that kid got to buy anything, because if I recall correctly, he pretty much wore my hand-me-downs until he hit his pre-teens. OK, that’s probably a gross exaggeration, but either way, I’m getting way off topic here.

So yeah, a lot of my back-to-school shopping for clothing was done at Mervyn’s because, well, my parents weren’t made of platinum credit cards, and really, I was so much of a dork back then it’s not like I would have known the difference. Actually, that’s a lie: I did know the difference. While the “cool” kids were wearing Z. Cavaricci, Guess? and Mossimo, I was rocking the Bugle Boy cargo pants and nameless pastel T-shirts.

Thus, it’s with mixed feelings that I offer up the latest casualty of the funtastic recession plaguing our land. Mervyn’s closed 12 “underperforming” stores in early 2007, bringing its national count down to 177 locations. By July of this year, the Hayward, Calif.-based company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and by October, it filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and began to shutter all of its stores, including the one pictured at Meadows Lane and Decatur Boulevard in Las Vegas — yes, just a hop, skip and closing-sale jump from Steve & Barry’s. As a matter of fact, I noticed another store next to Steve & Barry’s having an “everything must go” 50 percent off sale, so check back soon to see if that entire corner is coming to a crashing economic halt.

Get those cheap threads while you can!

Steve & Barry’s, the retail chain that sells casual sportswear and celebrity-endorsed clothing lines for not more than $10 a pop, opened its first Las Vegas location early this summer. It’s also Steve & Barry’s last Las Vegas location, as the Port Washington, N.Y.-based company filed for bankruptcy in July, not a month after the Vegas location opened just west of the Meadows Mall on Meadows Lane near Decatur Boulevard.

Not surprisingly, most experts blamed rapid expansion for Steve & Barry’s epic failure. Now the company is in the process of liquidating its assets and closing all of its stores.

Stay tuned to Bleeding Neon for more Moments of Zen as we watch the House That Deregulation and Sleeping at the Wheel Built crumble down all around us. Happy Friday!