Just read that Montgomery Ward’s will go out of business, after 126 years.
Altman’s. Wanamaker’s. Bonwit Teller. Woolworth. Fiorucci’s. J. Peterman . . . Where is one supposed to shop nowadays?
[Yeah, yeah, I know—online . . . ]
Monkey Wards leaving? Add Thalhimers and the old Sears Catalog to your list.
Online shopping sucks (is rife with problems). It costs so much for companies to keep a marketable web portal going that there is no savings passed on the the buyer. Humbug!
My ex oversaw a good prtion of MW’s claims services. After the stories she would tell me and the video she would bring in, I wouldn’t even slow down when going past one for fear of something happening to me!
And their Auto Express? :shudder: blown engines at least once a month from not putting the oil back in after a change/leaving the drain screw off!!
What a dump
Never shopped there much, but it is kind of sad to such an old institution go out of business. Oldsmobile, too, I was surprised since (judging by number you see on the road) Auroras and Intrepids were selling pretty well.
Sorry if this has been answered before; why do people call it ‘Monkey Wards’? What is the origin of that?
Does that mean I don’t have to pay off my Wards card?
A guy can hope, can’t he?
Yeah, but Intrepids are Dodge.
–Tim
That’s wild. I haven’t even thought about Wards since I was about twelve or thirteen. Then, this season, I see a crapload of Wards commercials, and i haven’t even seen[/n] one anywhere around here (there used to be a bunch in So CA, where I used to live). And now I hear they’re going out of business? What a trip…
Side note: We used to make fun of my Nana (mom’s mom) because she used to have this semi-English accent and called it “Wads”. Hahahahaha. I guess you had to be there.
Sorry Homer, I meant to say Intrigue…
Starting off the New Year, and Millenium, early.
Dang, that sucks. My mom worked for MW for 17 years, until her store (and just about all of them in downstate IL, except for the Spiffeld one) closed in 1997. I wore a **lot ** of MW clothes as a kid …
–tygre, who remembers poring over the Sears and Montgomery Wards’ catalogs every year as a kid
This is bizarre…I got a (yes) telemarketing call from Wards, asking me to get a charge card, while a news story ran on the TV about Wards closing.
I hate to see another old institution die, but must confess that Wards has been on my “eat shit and die list” for years; total boycott. Their automative dept. screwed me over royally when I was stone broke. I never forgave them.
But R.I.P. on behalf of the folks who worked and shopped there for years.
Veb
Montgomery Ward’s was a prime shopping destination when I was a kid. I believe that I got my first bicycle from there, but I haven’t even seen one in years.
Eve, where I grew up it was common to call the store Woolsworth. I have no idea why the “s” got added in there. One of the little pieces of charm that you get from growing up in a small town.
I once bought my boyfriend a pair of boxers at Wards. They ripped and shredded after one wearing. They suck, that’s why they’re going out of business. No sentimentality from me, out with the old, in with the new.
BRADLEES-a smallish, NE-based chain bit the dust just before Christmas. This was after emerging from Chapter 11, some 3 years ago. 161 store will close, and some 1800 people will be out of work. As I see it, there are several things happeneing here:
-too many stores! In the past 10 years, new stores have moved in to the NE region: WALMART, SAMS CLUB, BJs, TARGET, etc.
-stagnant market: the population of the region gas risen only about 2% in the past 10 years-so where were all the extra customers supposed to come from?
I can’t understand the mentality of corp[orate America-they just seem to think that people can continue to buy without any limits on growth!
-just my $0.02
Geez, I thought they were gone already. They closed up shop here in Lansing about 2 years ago. Most of their stuff was pretty crappy, IIRC, so I’m not mourning them.
plnnr, Woolsworth was a completely different store. Unfortunately, they’re gone too.
The sad part about Monkey Ward’s going belly-up isn’t that it happened, but that it happened now, when they finally seemed to have gotten a clue.
I’d steadily avoided MW for a couple of decades - they just didn’t know what they were doing, and each facelift and redesign seemed to re-prove that fact.
Just last year, they redesigned their store in the Annapolis mall, and it had been transformed into an absolutely terrific store. They finally had settled on a reasonable niche - in the wide range between Target and J.C.Penney’s, they aimed for just above the middle - and did it well. I’ve been buying clothes and furniture there; it’s all been good stuff, and the service has been excellent. They’ve also got (or, rather, had) good appliances, electronics, and so forth.
But this Christmas, their first Christmas after the redesign, was a flat one for retailing in general, so they apparently didn’t get the sales boost they needed to pay their bills.
Too bad - if they’d closed their doors 10 or 20 years ago, I wouldn’t have shed a tear. But now, it’s a real pity.
We’ve got a Ward’s here, as an anchor in a mall. I liked it. Didn’t shop there a whole lot, but the stuff that I did get there was good, and reasonably priced.
What’s surprising to me is the speed with which they’ll be closing. I mean, they announced it what, two days ago, and they’ll all be closed in two weeks. Not even enough time for a decent “going out of business” sale. How are they going to move all the merchandise they’ve got left?
I do feel really bad for the employees. That really sucks, right after Christmas.
These new stores aren’t expecting to have people spend without limits–they are trying to get business away from existing stores. They are succeeding because they frequently do a better job of meeting customers’ needs and desires.
Perhaps Walmart and Target moved in because they thought that they could attract customers away from Bradlees and Caldor (which has already closed.) There is a Bradlees about 1 mile from my house, and I didn’t shop there at all. They had inferior merchadise, selection, and service, and the prices weren’t all that low. If I wanted to shop in that sort of store, I preferred to drive 5 miles to the Target or the Kmart, where the merchandise and selection was much better. I am not sorry that Bradlees is going out of business. Maybe some better store will move into the space, so I can shop more locally.
The warehouse stores are doing the same thing. I am a Costco member, so I have no experience with others. Their products are consistently high-quality and well-priced. Also, it is much more convenient to purchase toilet-paper and other things by the case. Costco has definitely changed my shopping habits, and probably many other peoples’ as well.
I have never shopped at Montgomery Ward’s, but I expect that it met the same fate as Bradlees–it’s customers found their needs better served by other stores. If people can find equivalent merchandise in stores with better prices and better service, where are they gonna shop?
Uh, Woolworth’s was a completely different store, but plnnr’s point was that their town called it Woolsworth.
Just to throw another data point into the mix, I was just watching the trailer for ‘Oh Brother, Where Art Thou’ and the George Clooney character was thrown out of a shop. The shopkeeper’s line was “…and stay out of the Woolsworth!” Wasn’t able to see any identifying signs in the scene, so I can’t say if the store was actually a Woolworth store (F. W. or 's).
-mdf
Good riddance, I say. I’ve never even been to a Montgomery Ward, and can’t remember ever even seeing one, but I’ve been pissed at them ever since they bought Lechmere, ruined it, then got rid of it to keep from going bankrupt. Bastards took over a profitable store and local (mainly Massachusetts and vicinity) institution and sacrificed it for a couple more years of running crappy stores somewhere else. I still miss Lechmere.