In New England used to be the entry-level high-end place to go. I never saw Krell or anything near it, and they dropped analogue early on, but they did carry NAD, Denon, B&O (yeah, I know), and similar mostly high value brands. Service was OK, but it's not like you'd ever get a real listening session, and rooms were pretty much all open to each other. Still, for many of us, it was a good start and worlds better than box stores.

But for at least the past 10 years they have been little more than small sized box stores without the discounting. Sure, there would be a few better items available, and they carried some wire upgrades and the like- but honestly not much else. Even Best Buy has it's "high-end" section which was like a Tweeter within the store as far as it goes.

I wanted to buy things from them out of some old loyalty, but when it comes to A/V gear, TVs or multichannel setups, they not only didn't have different stuff, the prices were significantly higher.

They could have stocked good, lower priced high-end stuff like, Creek, Cambridge Audio, Marantz, Epos and the like and actually offer something the big boxes can't. That and given their guys a little more training and stressed more service and customer retention and maybe they'd have gotten out of Chapter 11 with somehting to show. All I've seen is- well really no strategy at all. Too bad- they will be last chain store that offered more...

When left alone, the invisible hand of supply and demand, will take care of itself.

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When left alone, the invisible hand of supply and demand, will take care of itself.

Agreed! But---- by the same token the visible hand of bad management and poor planning can kill a business even when the demand might actually be there.

This is part of the invisible hand. Something better will fill the void. Also, all free market companies have a lifespan. At some point they all end in one way or another. One bit of goods news is that Circuit City is crushing under the strain.

I don't see the current market as a bad thing. Its like waiting for after the first good freeze to go quail hunting. The freeze kills off the weak and sick ones. Except the market isn't predictable as the weather. We're going through a market freeze. The sick and weak are dying. Not necessarily a bad thing if left alone.

Their problem was they had an arrogant, ignorant purchasing department who thought they "knew" what brands were best to carry...and they didn't. You still can't go into a Best Buy store and buy decent speakers, yet there are numerous brands, well respected, but not to be found there or at Circuit City.

I once had a store manager for the local HiFi Buys tell the salesman not to hook up the display turntable for me to audition as "vinyl was dead". That store on Cobb Parkway in ATL and the one nearer me in Douglasville are both closed. Tweeter buying those stores was another mistake. The Circuit City is closing after Christmas leaving only the BestBuy open as an audio/vdeo retail source.

To me they are not closing becuase of the internet, they are closing because they did not know good sound, and they forgot to sell the sizzle, not the steak. Now you can buy a Sony Brevia HDTV at WalMart. Those dealers who thought video was going to totally drive their business lost out. Now some BestBuys are selling vinyl. Go figure.

Some of you older guys might remember since I was just a kid but around 1969 was pretty dismal retail sales. How did this hurt or help the audio manufacturers? Best to my knowledge, and at the time, RadioShack was considered low-end but compared to today I would rather, like I did, rebuild an older RadioShack TT (Toshiba?) than pay for a new good turntable. In other words, the low-end of yesterday is better manufactured quality than a lot of the low-end of today?

You guys remember how the Japanese automakers almost put the USA automotive industry to its knees? It started sort of subtle but what was going in Japan was things like quality circle management where the employees were very involved in improvements to quality. I think they referred to it as Quality Circle Management. I don't know what has become of American quality like that but it has sort of survived in a cottage industry environment with such high manufacturing costs that the retail price is through the roof. Bring back the old TEAC, Akai, Marantz, Pioneer, Realistic, McIntosh, and so forth. At least back then it was all good. Some better than others. Now, there is not much in the middle. Except for my sister with the professionally installed McIntosh home entertainment center I don't know one person, outside of this forum, that owns anything less than basic boxed up junk. Even my sister now in her fifties basically only had one system before her McIntosh and that was a Marantz. She used it for years. Decades. She still has it in storage. Apparently, I can't have it.

They're closing everywhere. The company is based in southern New Jersey, and the only one around here I haven't seen an announcement of a going-out-of-business sale for is the flagship store in Marlton, NJ.

The Philly store closed about a year ago, leaving us with, AFAIK, exactly three decent audio stores in Philadelphia proper. (Anyone know of any others besides David Lewis, Community Audio, and that guy on 2nd St. near South who hasn't updated his website in 5 years)

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... Now some BestBuys are selling vinyl. Go figure.

I just saw some vinyl at Costco. Bought the Capitol re-release of Band on the Run. They had Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon), but I already have the original early '70s copy. RadioHead is also available, among others. Only two small boxes of vinyl was all I saw.

I lament the passing of Tweeter. Like some of the other commentators here, I appreciated the fact that they sold good mainstream gear at prices that were at least competitive.

But I also noticed, in their last few years, they became a storefront, minus the store. They simply didn't stock anything! I was ready to close a deal on three separate occasions, only to find they had no stock on hand, none of their satellite stores had stock, and they couldn't give a reliable estimate of when the piece would be back in their warehouse.

Not a good business model...

I gave up on them.

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You guys remember how the Japanese automakers almost put the USA automotive industry to its knees? It started sort of subtle but what was going in Japan was things like quality circle management where the employees were very involved in improvements to quality. I think they referred to it as Quality Circle Management. I don't know what has become of American quality like that but it has sort of survived in a cottage industry environment with such high manufacturing costs that the retail price is through the roof. Bring back the old TEAC, Akai, Marantz, Pioneer, Realistic, McIntosh, and so forth. At least back then it was all good. Some better than others. Now, there is not much in the middle. Except for my sister with the professionally installed McIntosh home entertainment center I don't know one person, outside of this forum, that owns anything less than basic boxed up junk. Even my sister now in her fifties basically only had one system before her McIntosh and that was a Marantz. She used it for years. Decades. She still has it in storage. Apparently, I can't have it.

Lamont,

Too bad you can't get the Marantz. I heard those were really good back then. Their tuner was highly regarded.

Regarding Quality of American cars, those have improved over the years. According to Consumer Reports, the quality improved to a point equal to the Japanese of some year ago. That would mean a Japanese car bought say 5-10 years ago could be lesser quality than an American car today. And it's harder to get even higher quality when the quality has already been improved a lot. Kind of like audio gear too.

I'm sure you know that Dr. Deming (from USA) had quite an influence on the Japanese quality improvement. Not all Japanese companies are as successful with the quality improvement as Toyota and Honda have been.