Whatever company makes those brick-like fruit cakes (the ones that people give as “gifts” at Christmastime…to people they don’t like).
Nobody I know eats these things-I suspect that many get dumped…or “regifted”.
Brick and mortar porn stores.
There’s a universe of free content streaming online. That should kill 90% of the biz, and without checking, I bet you could get sex toys off Amazon.com billed and shipped discreetly.
Also, Playboy et al. Who pays for hardcopies of porn in the smartphone and tablet age?
Blackberry are incredibly popular in the UK, so it’s surprising to see they aren’t doing so well in the US anymore. Looking into it though it seems to be mostly down to young people purchasing them so they can text each other free on the Blackberry Messenger (?) service.
Re: AOL - I use AOL for email and for chat because I have a lot of old friends on there and because i’m comfortable with it. I haven’t paid them a dime since 2006 since i’m on broadband.
To add a few more to my list that i’ve thought of:
Gamestop - You can pretty much always buy console games cheaper online or at a big-box store, and at the rate that consoles are adopting digital distribution you soon won’t even need to do that. (Even the DS has downloadable full games now.)
Chuck E. Cheese - Video arcades in general died out about 10 years ago, so I just can’t understand how a place with ancient video games, '80s animatronics, and cardboard pizza still appeals to little kids.
WaMu Theater- This is a concert venue located underneath CenturyLink Field in Seattle. To this day, it is named after and uses the logo of Washington Mutual, a bank which failed and was taken over by the FDIC, was eventually liquidated and sold off to Chase, and which hasn’t even existed since 2009. I keep waiting for them to change the name to Chase Theater or CenturyLink Theater - I guess the naming rights contract must not have had an early termination clause.
Well, I think the theory goes that a mattress store works well for the mob when:
- They are at war and need to go to the mattresses, and
- Somebody needs to sleep with the fishes. What’s better for your back when taking your mortal rest than a Sealy?
That, and they also only install a BK right near where a McD’s is located - it must be in their business plan, too.
Sure. But there are FOURTEEN mattress stores within a few miles of me, for a product that lasts decades, and can be aquired from much less fly-by-night looking vendors. I’ve never seen a customer in any of them, and a back-of-the-enveloper calculation indicates that even if folks bought 3 mattresses a decade, that’s way too many stores for the population.
I don’t subscribe to the “mob front,” theory, but there’s clearly something about this business model that I don’t understand.
The internet can’t suck your D through a gloryhole.
I’d have to disagree about Burger King. McDonalds rules for breakfast but there burgers make me want to puke and they dump MSG all over their chicken. Whereas I love Whoppers, usually the special edition ones like the BBQ ones are to die for.
As far as Ritz camera, maybe people bring in their digital pictures to have them printed. Better quality and last longer than printing at home.
Ch…Ch…Ch…Chia
But I can imagine the day, in the not so distant future. . .
Cummy Gobbler?
The key is two little words in your sentence: “little kids”. As the father of a little boy, I know that to a little kid, nothing is necessarily old or outdated. Everything is new to him.
I almost agree, except that it’s always better than McDonald’s. McDonald’s is the one fast food restaurant where I understand why people think fast food is mediocre food. The only things they had going for them were the fries and nuggets, and they’ve ruined (well, mediocred) both of them.
And I really can’t think of anything I expected to fail that hasn’t been mentioned already.
Build-A-Bear Workshop. Wikipedia says there are 400 of them worldwide. When they started in St. Louis in the late 90s it seemed like a dumb idea: build your own teddy bear? That’s like Kramer’s “make your own pizza”, except that most people don’t want more than a couple of stuffed bears.
Apparently the business model was more robust than I supposed.
You’re very obviously a price-sensitive consumer. Some of us are more interested in better stuff than just what’s cheapest, and that’s what the other stores are marketing toward. For example, Wal-Mart may have one cheap-ass conventional cheese grater made in China for $5, and Target may have an Oxo microplane style grater for $9. Some of us prefer the microplane style grater and are willing to pay $4 more for it.
Expand that thinking across multiple products and services and that explains why other stores stay in business even though they compete with Wal-Mart.
It’s a good example of the one lesson every businessperson ought to know- there are only 2 business strategies when it’s all boiled down- lowest cost or differentiation. If you’re lowest cost, you HAVE to be the lowest cost, or you’re not competitive. If you differentiate, you don’t have to be the lowest cost.
Wal-Mart is the lowest cost retailer, so unless someone else can out-cheap them, the smart play is to differentiate themselves by higher end products, more variety, etc…
Your dad. 
Interestingly, the second-to-last mattress store I went into was staffed solely by a gorgeous young Russian woman, wearing a tight little dress and high heels that would have been completely impractical for moving a mattress.
Our local Recycle Bookstore, which mostly does used books, is doing quite well, thank you.
So yes, it’s a niche market, but it’s a damn good one.
Great vacuum. Terrible sales model, incredibly high price.
God yes, that stuff is craptastic.