There are businesses out there that every time I drive past them I wonder, " They have to be a front for the mob or something." because I never a) see anyone in there b) has to be such a limited need for such a product c)Hi Opal.
**Piano Movers ** I mean, really, how often do you move a piano?
**House of Watch Bands **. Admittedly they were the first I called when I couldn’t find (three year search) a swatch watch band and they couldn’t help at all. ( Swatch, FTR, only sells their watch bands in lots of 12 or more, so dealers do not stock them as there is little demand.)
**Pet groomers **
**Sunglasses Hut ** Here in Michigan, the demand is not as great as say, CA or FL, but there is never anyone in there.
**Hot Dog on a Stick Restaurant ** The name says it all. (It’s at the mall. Looks gross.)
There’s a mom 'n pop store with a storefront shop on some prime real estate downtown. Their somewhat large store sells only hair “scrunchies” and hair elastics. Walls of them on display.
I can not imagine how they could possibly sell enough 25 cent scrunchies to cover the rent on their location.
In all honesty, I’ve always had the suspicion that it’s actually some kind of money laundering thing.
“House of Canes”. It only had canes, canes, canes. Weird canes, exotic canes, ordinary canes. My sister uses a cane, so it was a big deal for her to go to House of Canes and get something special. I don’t know if they are still in business. Perhaps - there were a decent amount of people in there when we went. Maybe the cane business is really hopping.
The Mall of America sports not one, but two Chili Peppers stores. They sell spicy peppers, and books for spicy cooking. Hey, I’m all for that, but never knew how two of the same stores in one Mall could survive.
I’ve seen a lot of businessess in good locations that seem like they couldn’t make enough to cover costs and in a of the cases it is because the owner owns the shop and doesn’t really need much money. As soon as they die or retire or their relatives get them in a home, the shops are either knocked down and redeveloped or turned into profitable enterprises.
But there are a few that defy belief, like a massive brand new Paino shop that has opened near me. I reckon they smuggle drugs in in the painos.
We’ve got a company that does nothing but Organize. They are professional organizers. They come in and organize your files, desk, or something like that. Organizing??
There are plenty of little candy stores in NYC which have one little rack of candy, and tiny video rental shops with only a few tapes. They certainly don’t do enough business to pay NY rents.
They sell drugs over the counter to people who know how to ask for them.
I’m in downtown Hong Kong, surrounded by shopping malls full of stores selling luxury designer label goods … to no-one. Walk past the stores: shoes, shoes, handbags, shoes, clothes, shoes, cosmetics, shoes, handbags, clothes, shoes…
All of it grossly overpriced. All of it aimed at women.
And yet, you never see anyone buying anything. A few pairs of Japanese tourists wander around carrying a lot of bags, so I guess there’s an occasional customer. But how can these stores (Prada, Louis Vuitton and all that overpriced tacky crap) afford huge rents, plus the salaries of at least three gorgeous female sales staff (who must between them speak at least rudimentary English, Japanese and Mandarin as well as Canto), plus a Nepalese security guard?
All I can guess is, the mark-up on that garbage must be astronomical.
We’ve moved two pianos (you’d be surprised), the dog has long fur that mats and he hates being groomed (and not just any groomers; we keep the MOBILE groomer in business), and my younger daughter will actually ask to go to the mall in order to eat one of those abominations.
There’s this little place in a strip mall three blocks from my flat in Torrance called Legsavers. I posted its name in a “Funny Businesses” thread on the temp Board. I thought it was a place that cured varicose veins and the like. But no. I saw its advert in the Yellow Pages, and the headline was “Having your leg amputated? Come to us first!” Apparently they do micro-surgery on gangrenous legs.
Now, how many people in Torrance do you think have their legs amputated due to disease each year?
This is so funny. I acutally grew up as a Christian Scientist, and the phrase I remember most is “as we read from the writings of Mary Baker Eddy…”. Honesly, I let religion go a while back. I did do a little waffling back and forth about which religion I would choose, then realized, you know what, I am a good person, I dont hurt people, I want the right to choose what I do with my life and so on…needless to say, I couldnt find a religion that said all of that. I just find it funny, and I am sorry if I offend anyone. There is a Chrisitan Science reading room downtown in ATL, and I have never seen anyone in there either… Things that make you go “hummmmmm”.
I’ve lived where I do for 16 years now and there’s not one, but two locations around the corner that have recently made a go of it.
The first is now a French restaurant that is in a building that has consumed (killed) at least one bar or restaurant per year since I’ve been here. Nice building, wrong place.
The other is now an Italian restaurant that occupies the small building that was for many years an adult bookstore. That building consumed several coffee shops/restaurants in the few years since its conversion from the sex trade.
Both of these places have outlasted their predecessors while sharing common traits:
inscrutable schedules - jam packed Wednesday night and closed on Friday
sometimes
absolutely paranoid about giving me a menu
busboys drive Porches (hot ones)
They’ve both outlasted all previous efforts at either location, yet no one I know in the neighborhood has ever found them open when they wanted to try them out
from all appearances, you need to be “in” to get in.
I’ve long since reckoned these to be money laundering deals. I could be wrong. Perhaps they’re just “sports” clubs.
Some of these places probably manage to stay alive because they are the only place that you can get a particular item. For example, when we needed a piano moved to the second floor of a house with very tight stairways, the mover told us (after sweating, cursing, and finally succeeding in a much longer time frame than he planned when he quoted the job) not to ever bother calling him again. When my (now ex) wife decided a year later that she really did want it downstairs after all :rolleyes:, she found that there were only about 2 companies in town (Cleveland) that did that. And the guy who came out turned out to be the son of the first guy!
Another factor is if they can do a certain percentage of their business over the Internet. There is a place here in town that specializes strictly in flashlights and flashlight parts. I wouldn’t have even known about them if I hadn’t been searching online for a replacement bulb for an unusual flashlight that was no longer made.
This whole thread reminds me of the “Scotch Tape Store” Saturday Night Live routine!
There is a store here in town that sells only flags. I think it’s called The Flag Shop. This I find odd - I have never bought a flag, and neither has anyone else I know. Even if one of us were to feel a sudden desire to buy a flag, I’m thinking the lifetime limit on flag need would be pretty close to one. But the store has been there for at least 5 years, and is HUGE. Very puzzling.
Rite Aid. Seriously, given that they have one of these things every 4 blocks around here (or so it seems), I don’t understand how they stay in business. I hardly ever see more than 1 or 2 people in there. I guess I just don’t think of a place you go to buy baby powder and camera film as a real destination store…
There used to be one around town, but it got converted into a McDonalds or a coffee shop a few years back. I can tell you that the McDonalds/coffee shop probably does a way better business than the Christian Science Reading Room ever did!
In Salt Lake City, in the Sugar House district at the corner of 2100 South and 1100 East, there’s a furniture store called Sterling Furniture. Family-owned and -run for I don’t know how many years. From the outside it looks like a typical neighborhood business: fairly clean building, bland window displays, a lot of sale signs in the windows.
From the inside, it’s a run-down dump with carpet worn through to bare subfloor, huge water stains on the ceiling, and allegedly new furniture for sale that looks like it was made 20 to 30 years ago.
I’ve been past this place hundreds of times and in it just once. The parking lot is always empty. The time I went in, there were five or six salespeople and no other customers.
I have no idea how they’ve managed to avoid bankruptcy.
Damn! If my sister had known about that (before she had her leg amputated) she would have gone there! (That’s part of the reason she uses a cane. She’s not steady on her feet, with her fake leg.)
They’ll come from all over Southern California. For years, I was my sister’s ride, because she also has bad eyes and can’t drive. I cannot tell you exactly all the places we drove to, because when I would drive her, I was in “mindless driving drone” mode, and just drove where she told me to. (I’m sad, really. Even when she had weekly appointments, she’d have to give me fresh directions EACH and EVERY week. I just didn’t remember how to get there on my own.)
We were in Sunland (near Burbank) yet I remember driving at least an hour, hour and a half each way (during non-rush hour traffic, we always scheduled our lives around avoiding rush hour). I took her to the Braille institute near Hollywood Blvd., and I believe there was some place out in Orange County (Wound Care Center) that we went to each week. Oh, a good fake leg doctor she went to every two weeks was near the City of Industry. Nothing (apparently) was in or near Sunland. So - driving from Sunland to Torrance? Bah! No big deal. We would have gone there weekly! Daily, if needs be.
