51 game crazy stores to close

I was at the Game Crazy by me, and the manager told me they were closing many of the stores. Here in the MN metro area, almost all of the southern metro ones are closing.

Interesting piece of information. Did you know Gamecrazy was pitched to Hollywood Video by a former VP at Funcoland?
 
Where the hell do top executives come from anyway. This is the same "revenue-saving brainstorm" every CEO has whenever wallstreet tells them their outlook isn't good enough, including the company I work for.

Lay off workers, cut spending, cut divisions, outsource jobs to india, discontinue products, slash development, reduce marketing budget (ooo, that ones gonna definitely help increase market share and profits), rinse, repeat. They actually think that slowly slicing away at a company until it eventually withers away and dies is a viable strategy for long-term growth, recovery, and stability.

5 monkeys at a keyboard could come up with better ideas than this. I spend 6 years at college taking classes that would make a business major puke, and I get my salary frozen at barely lower-middle class and benefits cut while upper management skims a 1.4M$ bonus for christmas. Somehow this whole thing should be reversed.

Sorry for ranting, but it's been on my mind for months.
 
Originally posted by Jedi Master Thrash@Sat, 2005-06-25 @ 09:50 PM



5 monkeys at a keyboard could come up with better ideas than this. I spend 6 years at college taking classes that would make a business major puke, and I get my salary frozen at barely lower-middle class and benefits cut while upper management skims a 1.4M$ bonus for christmas. Somehow this whole thing should be reversed.

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:agree

This is very sad news... I only know of one gamecrazy anywhere near me, but they carry classic games which is more than I can say for EB and Gamestop..... :angry: :damn:
 
The problem with Game Crazy, was they put them into any Hollywood Video. Ignoring how much the store makes in sales. Ignoring if the store can be seen without going into the Hollywood Video. Here in Minnesota, there were many Game Crazy's that had no signage, no enterance; nothing to distinguish it was there. That all was poor planning on their part. Hollywood Video decided they were opening X stores, iregardles of if they had X viable locations. They rushed too fast into the business. That is a common mistake made by many companies. The overhead grows to fast, and your revenue isn't enough to pay for it.
 
Hmmm... People are talking without thinking too far here...

GameCrazy locatins were NOT in Movie Gallery stores. They were opened up in Hollywood Video stores. Movie Gallery bought the Hollywood Video company earlier this year.

This does make sense to me. Hollywood Video was a failing company at the time Movie Gallery bought them, and it only makes sense to close down the stores that are loosing the most money. Especialy if there is a Movie Gallery in the surrounding area.
 
Yeah, I thought it was Hollywood Video, but I wasn't sure. I miss read the article. I don't go to any rental store anymore. I got sick of late fees. And I only once stopped into a Game Crazy, that was during their huge sale a month ago.
 
fuck gamecrazy. 50% of all their products are defunct and don't work properly/at all. They dont test ANY of the software or hardware that comes in, they are expensive as shit, they will NOT let you return broken hardware/software if it was bought used. they give you in store credit. The place is a fuckin joke. I hope they close all of em down, let the ma/pa stores handle the used videogames...
 
That's kind of what I'm talking about though. Say you have a hollywood video store where the gamecrazy is hidden and nobody knows it's there. And the store isn't keep up profits. The magic 8-ball solution is to just cut it. But there could be plenty of alternatives that could turn out better in the long run. For instance, invest a couple thousand dollars and build a door and entrance for the game crazy, put up a large sign, and maybe throw some ads into the local mailboxes (I get game crazy ads about once every 3 months in my mailbox).

Or maybe the stores in general aren't keeping up with the competition. Maybe the solution is to change failed policies, rather than cutting. For instance, a long time ago (like 10 years), you used to be able to rent new releases for 2-3$ (not the "newest" ones, but after the hit wave), and you could get old releases 2 for 99c on Tuesdays. You had the option of cheaper 1 or 2 day rentals, or longer 5-7 day rentals. Sometimes you'd even get a buck back for returning a movie the next day. These types of policies made customers happy, they made customers feel like the store cared about them. They had more options so the customer felt like they were in control of their own movie renting. I used to rent videos every week when stores were like this.

Now, every video store charges like 5$ for new releases. You have no choice of a cheaper shorter rental, just the 5$ 7-day. Movies stay on the new-release rack for like 3 years. There's no specials or cheaper deals for old-releases. Of course they're losing customers and dropping profits. The problem isn't the market, the problem is their dump sales tactics and anti-customer rental policies.

Also, I would like to say that technically I wouldn't consider game crazy a real contender in the retro used-market, because they refuse to purchase really old or non-popular systems (like SMS, TG, atari, neo-geo, jaguar, virtual boy, etc). Actually I think they also won't buy saturn. The saturn stuff they have they only got because it was part of a larger trade in, and they didn't actually give any money for it. And they've told me they won't buy game gear stuff anymore.

I was trying to rake the details out of a manager one day. I wanted to know if someone just wanted to "donate" or give them some of this older stuff, like SMS or atari, maybe as part of a larger donation, if they would take it. Becuase they it would be all profit to sell it, and people like me would be willing to buy it for decent prices. And I couldn't get a real answer to my question out of it. He just kept saying that they wouldn't take it. My biggest fear was that they would just throw it out rather than try to sell it if they did get some in, and this is what I was really trying to get at (it was after I discovered they threw out boxes to dreamcast games).
 
Things is, in the commercial world, you rarely own the property. To make modifications, you have to get permission and sometimes it note even financially viable. The manager I was talking to, came to Game Crazy from Funcoland. He was recruited by them, when they were opening. And many of the stores were put in locations, where the Hollywood Video had weak used sales. Not every location has similar clinets.

When I managed for Gamestop, my store in the Mall of America had the highest percentage of used business in our district. Even after the Funco/GS merger they were one of the top 5. There were Funco's that would ship their used stuff to us, due to our success.

Hollywoods failure was jumping ahead too fast. A few years back, there was a restaurant called Boston Market. They were one of the fastest growing fast-food restaurants. Howver, their overhead greew quicker than their revenues. They almost went bankrupt; they had to closes tons of stores. In business you need to move gradually.

As for ma and pa's running the used business; the old game market isn't big enough to support many of them. Personally, I think the best option would be an in line store; but also an online one. Easy to reach more people, and cheaper.
 
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