Mob involvement, according to my little sister. She insists that video stores, mattress stores, and futon stores exist only to launder money.
Curious why you listed this one.
Is it because of their problems in the late 80’s?
Mattress stores? Doesn’t everybody need a bed? We’ve bought mattresses (what else?) from mattress stores quite a few times over the last few decades.
I’m surprised AOL is still alive. But I wouldn’t call them insignificant.
They bring in about 1billion per year in ad revenue compared to facebook which brings in about 3billion.
A whole bunch of the chain sit-down diner competitors:
Shoneys
Friendly’s
Perkins
Bob’s Big Boy
All of them have mediocre food and largely dated menu selections. And the older restaurants in the chains are downright depressing. I can understand how someone might eat at one of these if nothing else is around, but why choose these if you could go to, say, a Bob Evans or Eat’ n Park?
I almost put Dennys on the list but I think they have cult fans and hipsters keeping them alive.
I don’t know that IBM was ever really at risk. At one point it seemed concerning because so much of their revenue was in mainframes, and with workstations and servers a lot of tasks no longer required the significant investment of a mainframe system. However, IBM was still pretty well diversified, as they had their hand in the desktop PC business around that time as well and were doing well enough in that, along with their later laptop business that I don’t think they were ever truly at risk of going belly up.
With their move to become more and more of an IT consulting company they’ve potentially actually gotten ahead of the game. Unlike Microsoft which is still vulnerable if wide numbers of people stop using desktop PCs, IBM wants to really just be in the consulting business and service business so it’s almost irrelevant what technology their customers use.
Plus, even doubts about their mainframe business were a little off the mark. People are still buying more mainframes than anyone expected in 1990, and a lot of legacy systems still run on mainframes that are maintained through very lucrative IBM support contracts. So even if IBM hadn’t branched out into consulting they’d probably still be chugging along.
It’s not MY theory.
IBM’s mainframe sales have pretty much always been solid. They were up over 50% in the second quarter of 2012. They’re used differently now, but mainframe sales for IBM have never really been in huge danger. They have been through cycles, but I don’t think it really threatened the company in any way.
In the Northern Virginia area, there must be dozens of mattress stores, granite outlets, and kitchen/bathroom design shops. These are all investments that a person makes, at most, a few times in their lives. How do so many of these places stay in business?
I never see anyone in the Bose stereo shop in the mall. Is the shop just a loss leader for a thriving online business?
Ditto on Friendly’s restaurants. Sharply misnamed, in my experience.
Blackberry.
Friendly’s and Bob’s are the only ones I can agree with. The rest are big on breakfast, and American’s breakfast interests are uniform enough that you may as well go to Denny’s cause even if you went somewhere else you’d be getting the same thing anyway.
ETA: I prefer to not go there for breakfast, but the reason is because of the crowd, which doesn’t argue for its should-be-going-belly-upness 
Because … Oh, man, BURN!!
Yeah, it was a dumb answer.
I disagree with this; the electronic components that they sell are low-quality generic parts (e.g. IRF540 MOSFETS, which are an ancient technology, with slow switching and high on resistance compared to modern MOSFETS, which I can also get for much less), resistors cost more than a dollar(!) for just five (I can buy 100 for less than a dollar online), same for small-signal transistors (more than a dollar for a 2N2222?! They must be crazy; I can get them elsewhere for a few cents each), and shipping adds less than 10 percent on the orders I make; of course, this is only true if you spend $50-100+). Oh yes, they also don’t provide volume discounts, that I can see; in some cases, discounts can be so great that if I need 40 of something, I might as well buy 100 because it is cheaper and I’d need more in the future anyway (check out the second link to resistors; one for 9 cents, 50 for 50 cents and 100 for 90 cents, which is a 90% reduction in unit price). Considering that I spend as much as $600-800 on a single major project (not including parts I reuse from discarded electronics, some of which aren’t even sold at major distributors), you can get the idea of how much more it would be.
You’re paying for convenience. When the kids were young, this was a huge help - grocery shopping was SUCH a hassle with the babies, plus the time suck.
Of course, we quit using them after a while because you never quite knew what you were going to get: if they were out of an item, you didn’t get it. So we always had to make trips to the grocery store anyway.
Plus, of course, now the kids are old enough that I can leave 'em home alone without the authorities getting called ;).
As nifty as it is to be able to get a video from Netflix or Amazon, instant, the minute I want it… the selection still sucks. You can order discs from Netflix, but that takes several days to get to you. Blockbuster is 3 miles away from us and we can get pretty-near-instant gratification.
[pedantic jackass]
I think you mean Research in Motion. Blackberry is the name of their most famous product.
[/pedantic jackass]
I agree. They are the K-mart of fast food: they wait and see what McDonald’s does, and then wait two years before introducing a crappier version of the same thing. This has been their business plan for like 40 years. They did it with value meals, play lands, happy meals, salads, breakfast, etc. They have been absolutely determined to court the exact same demographics as McDs and never tried to distinguish themselves in any way. I like their burgers better than McDonalds, but everywhere else–from customer service to menu selections to basic cleanliness–they have always had a knack for not being basically the same but not quite as good, for being a little behind the curve. Wendy’s was clever and gutsy enough to occasionally try new things and innovate a little. BK not so much.
I worked at a radio shack for some time in my undergrad (before it was called The Source here in Canada due to a controversy with a Circuit City buy-out). Cellphones, TV, and internet plans. It was the big honey pot for the sales people, and for the store. Getting people locked into those long term contracts. But still…it doesn’t make sense…
Go to a mall. There’s going to be an Apple store, Ma Bell, Rogers, Telus, Wireless wave, Virgin Mobile, Wind, Fido. Those are Canadian brands…I bet there are MORE cellphone places in the U.S. Our Radio Shack was at one of the sleepiest malls in town, and even there, there was 7 places to get a cellphone. Even Black’s Photography (The camera store decided to sell cellphones based on their camera specs to shore up their slow SLR sales. :D) sold more phones than us. I don’t know anyone whose first stop in cellphone shopping is Radio Shack.
But…But blackberry 10 is teh awesomez and will save Research in Motion…:rolleyes:
Maybe because Big Boy has decent food and Bob Evans doesn’t? Or maybe because they exist where the other chains don’t? If you live out west there isn’t a Bob Evans anywhere. Bob’s Big Boy seem to exist in Michigan and Southern California and nowhere else.
Arthur Treacher’s. About once every fifteen years I walk in there thinking I’ll get some good old-home-style fish and chips; then remember why I haven’t returned in so long. Fish and chips is supposed to be greasy, but somehow the shops in Ireland use grease that tastes good. I have never been to an Arthur Treachers where there wasn’t a slightly rancid flavor to the breading. Disgusting.
Clearly you haven’t tried the cini-minis. :: Simpson Drool ::
