So that counter on their site just reset once it hit the date. It's on their official website so it seems very strange that something like that would happen. I have no clue what's going on there, please reply to this if you have any ideas.
Company Man I guess circuit city is also going to open an e commerce website and follow the Amazon strategy for all sellers to use their website as a platform. Wonder of these guys can still compete with Amazon!
@@TheManinBlack9054 hhgregg was actually my name tag in a game, but when I found out hhgregg was a store, I quickly changed it. I didn’t need to be sued when I was still nine. 😂
The final version was dumb: hhgregg In earlier years, the logo was still all lower case (except for the first G), but I they at least had periods after the Hs. It read: h.h. Gregg Before that, it was in all caps and made more sense. H.H. GREGG Blame graphic designers for trying to make it look cool.
hh Gregg will always have a special place in my heart.... they helped me jump start my car after my battery died on my way home from buying a tv at Best Buy
Was very glad to see this company die. They were the #1 "bait-n-switch" operation in the Eastern part of the country. Constantly and consistently they would advertise discounted product which was NOT in the stores - and when you got there it was always "oh gosh, we just sold out of that. Instead you should buy ..." as they point to a more expensive product. Real scum bags.
Yep they're back online, probably some company bought their trademark and trying to capitalize on it. Unfortunately, the internet has killed a lot of brick 'n mortal business... some for good while others not so much. I sad to see all the small mom 'n pops businesses go, which were the staple in many neighborhoods who actually cared about their customers. :(
Totally agree. Also the salesman who ignored you if you weren't there to buy a big ticket item..we went once to buy a toaster oven there once, was greeted at door by one of their salespeople and when asked what I was looking for , I told him a toaster oven, he looked down at me pointed in a direction and said " I think they are over there someplace" and walked away, and I turned around and walked out!
As a former employee of 3 years I can honestly say I'm glad the company is dead and gone. Turn over rate was high. Draw vs commission was the devil's handshake rate of pay. And management was terrible in my experience. Bait and switch was all we could do to try and make a living. Never will I work electronics retail again because of hhgregg.
I use to work there. I never had to worry about the draw pay lol. Was making 2500$ paychecks as the top salesman there almost every month lol. It was cut throat for sure. The management sucked because they didn’t pay them well and they’d be envious of the top sales people. Also once they changed the commissions up a bit towards the end that changed it all. Then they started firing and letting the best sales people go for the silliest things. The managers prob made so many folks miserable and quit too. I miss selling them beds too lol Serta paid me real good 👍 and always sell the accessories too. Honestly for people who even touched draw pay once or twice they’d struggle the whole time and I knew it was rough af. My buddy had many times where he was in draw and man that would suck
One of these hh gregg appliance stores opened up a few years back near us. We went in one day and bought an item. Later on we returned the item, and were given a store credit card. Fine, right? Nope. I went back to buy another item. The gum chewing clerk would NOT honor the store credit card "oh we can't get the credit card to work" was the excuse. We became disgusted with their slimy, shady tactics, since their manager seemed to be about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine. We told them and the other 3 customers in the store how we felt and how we wouldn't be back. They didn't like this and herded us to the door. "We'll see how fast your business closes" was what I said as we stalked out to our car. Sure enough, the store was closed within a year.
An HHGreg store replaced a massive Best Buy in my area. They had a digital camera sale as an opening flyer/newspaper ad that young me was really excited about so I went into the store and was immediately swarmed by four employees with no other customers. They said they didn't have any and the sales person never saw the camera before. They got the manager and I found the camera displayed for more than the advertised price in the case and told them that was the one. The manager offered to sell me the display model without any cables or even the box but said they didn't have any, never got any, and MIGHT get them in the next shipment from corporate which was two weeks away. I went to an electronics store down the street who needed to call to price match the ad. When they called the HHGreg I was just at and asked about the price HHGreg denied having ever carried that model of camera. And that was the beginning and end of our local HHGreg, they must've done that bait and switch to a number of customers because even on massive sales the place was empty and was closed within two years.
Damn my experience was the opposite, the store was empty and like four employees swarmed me and asked me if I needed help with anything, one by one they all asked me. Ugh
I have a brother in law who worked for hhgregg, and over the years I got a few nuggets from him. hhgregg wasn't a dedicated electronics store to the degree of Best Buy. They sold mattresses and other stuff as well. My brother in law said that basically, hhgregg cherry picked the highest margin items that other Big Box stores and dept. stores would sell, and sold those. The downside of that is that they were kind of like a baseball player who always swings for home runs but gets alot of strikeouts and pop flies along the way. This also meant that consumers weren't always clear what hhgregg was. You mentioned the lack of recognition a few times, but when you walk in and see a substantial chunk of the store dedicated to random non-electronics stuff, you're probably more confused than you were before. Second, you mentioned that sales staff had the power to haggle. They were actually ENCOURAGED to haggle, all the way down to selling something for a penny above cost. The idea was that they feared that if a customer left the store, they'd just buy the item online, so better to get them to buy it now at hhgregg, give them a deal and hope that brings them back in the future. This undermined the fact that they were concentrating in high margin items since sales staff would give up those margins pretty regularly.
I went to an hhgregg near me, I couldn’t figure out if it was a shitty furniture store, an electronic store, it had no identity what so ever. There were no customers, and the help wasn’t all that great.
Yeah, I'm from Indiana, and the one time I visited an hhgregg, I got the impression it was more a furniture and appliance store that also sold some electronics. Unlike the pictures shown here, the floor I remember was about 50% appliances, 25% furniture, and 25% everything else. This was in the 90's, though, so possibly they tried to shift their emphasis and failed?
Mark L I used to work at hhgregg right before they shut down. For some reason they kept cutting back on electronics and added more furniture, and yes, it was shitty, more than 1/2 of it was returned because it would fall apart in a matter of weeks.
Oh, the employee's were a help...They helped ram their heads up your ass the second you walk in, the second you stop to look at anything....literally was a pain in the ass. They made commission, which I believe when they would be allowed to haggle over the price, it was probably their commission they were cutting into, when they would drop the price for you. I liked going in there, and checking out the newest TV's, but I hated walking into the store, because I hated being bothered by an employee, when All I wanted to do was look, and when I knew more about electronics than they did. Oh, and anything that wasn't a major piece of equipment ( TV, Fridge, Washers ) was expensive as fuck? needed a 4 foot HDMI cable? $25. And they didn't stock or sell lower priced "cheaper" cables either. They were always expensive as fuck. Though it does kinda suck they went out of business, because where I live, the closest best buy is a good 30+ minute drive one way. So they were the only place to buy TV's, if you didn't want to buy a cheap ass TV from Walmart.
Marth I had the same experience (South NJ). It was a mixture of different stores and the employees were awful. My mom had a question about something and the associate said "Ok just wait one second" to go find the answer which is normal. But he literally never came back. Walked by her a few times and that was it. She swore never to go in there again lol. Another thing I noticed was that most of the staff was young African American guys, which isn't a negative thing, but it was a bit strange as usually most Best Buy's I go into have people from many races and ages groups. It honestly felt like a black person was the manager and just hired their family members without any regard of how they'll work. Whatever it was, the service was really awful. The people at my Best Buy, young, old, white, black, hispanic, etc. I've never had bad service there ever. I think this might be because of this rapid expansion mentioned in the video. They may not have cared much about who they hired because their number one priority was opening stores and having any sort of staff. Makes sense to see you had the same experience.
I worked at hhgregg for a little over a year until they shut down in May. They made a lot of mistakes. 1. They shifted focus from electronics to furniture for some reason 2. they used a 3rd party delivery/installation company whose employees had 0 vested interest in hhgregg so they didn't really care if the delivery was on time or even completed at all and in many cases they didn't do the installation correctly. 3. They didn't have full time employees other than management and commissioned sales people and offered very little benefits. 4. Their return policy was horrible and if a customer had issues with an appliance they would have to send it to be serviced leaving the customer S.O.L. until it was fixed which could take up to 2 or 3 weeks. This company basically was run by idiots and it got what was coming.
I worked there about a year. I think they expanded too quickly and didn't do enough advertising as well. Many hhgreggs didn't even have a sign showing drivers that a store was located nearby and you hardly ever saw ads on TV. The commission vs. draw system also contributed to the decline and resulted in high turnover when salespeople couldn't get out of draw due to low customer volume. Also, like many department stores, they didn't invest enough in the online marketplace, and that eventually caught up with them. Often times salespeople would steal online orders and sell the products themselves to get commission, resulting in angry online shoppers who wanted to know where their product was. They also attempted to price match Walmart and Amazon which hurt the commission of sales people and ultimately was a losing game. They also invested too much in furniture, much of it very overpriced. They really should have stuck with appliances and electronics. Also, they should have replaced the draw system with a commission plus hourly wage to reduce staff turnover. They should have focused on customer service, not price matching Walmart, and they should have done more advertising.
Why did hhgregg fail? (I worked there for 5 years): 1. Intense price competition. In my area hhg had a reputation for "wheeling and dealing" with the customer to get a sale (almost like running a used car dealership). When the margins were higher that wasn't a problem and you could make a very good living at hhg, but when Amazon and Walmart invaded the electronics business and Lowe's and Home Depot started poaching our turf it became impossible to maintain our margins due to our policy of meeting and beating the competition. 2 (related to point one): An over-reliance on selling "Premium Service Plans" due to falling margins/commissions. 3. An ineffective internet business plan that undercut the stores and the 100% commissioned based sales team. The fact that customers started picking our brains for advice and "show-rooming" us before they bought on Amazon or at Walmart didn't help either. Most of the customers who bought on our web site fell into two categories. A. Someone who did not want us to bother them at all when they picked up their orders (particularly if we pitched the "Plan") or B. The one I dreaded far more: The customer who did not know very much about what they had bought and wanted me to explain it all to them. As a commissioned salesperson I received ZERO compensation for this and it took a significant amount of time away from the sales floor. Is it "my job" to do so? Just ask the store sales manager about sales "productivity" (particularly when you go into "draw") and margins and your answer would be NO. I didn't like working for free and I bet you don't either. You can make it up by making a few big sales? Again, NO. store margins got too tight and commissions dwindled accordingly. You could sell a $3000 TV and make maybe $50-75 bucks on it depending on the store's profit. 4. A failed over-expansion of our store base. 5. Our foray into furniture. Why? (refer to points 1 and 2 above). We were't very good at it or the cell phone business either (product mix/quality and delivery/activation service). 6. I agree that delivery/installation was a nightmare. The warehouses also had insufficient stock of popular items. HHG taught me a lot about sales, which I appreciate. But I hope I never have to work like that ever again.
I grew up a stones throw away from their Indianapolis HQ. At one point, in the SAME PARKING LOT there was a Best Buy, a Circuit City, and an HHGregg. It was like a freaking commerce gang fight and it was incredible.
John Dee Smith as a former employee this is very true. Only had limited stock at a great price to get you in them BAM oops we just sold out lemme sell you something more expensive
hhgregg was still here in Indy in 2016 when I moved here, but closed in 2017 I think. The Yelp reviews were like you all said bait and switch big time.
hhgregg is finished. Once a company removes their physical stores and becomes online only... Well, we've seen what happened with Blockbuster and the revamped Circuit City.
"Revamped" as in the store chain went bankrupt a decade ago, then someone bought the name last year and restored it as a website. Although both descriptions would work, since no one has been shopping at the new CC.
In my city there was an hhgregg that opened in the building that used to be Circuit City and before that was a Radio Shack. It also happened to be right across the street from Best Buy...
The name doesn't really describe anything that would make want to visit their store. I don't like Best Buy, but at least their name is somewhat descriptive. They offer low prices.
I'm in Missouri and you're correct. I've heard of them but never knew what they were. I legit thought they were a clothing store or a TJMAXX kind of store
Stardust Nova Not really, well not for me at least. I will buy every plot until I have no more then I mortgage the previous plots and then slowly put then back into business when I am low in money I mortgage it and then I just repeat until I am the winner. I haven't lost yet with this strategy.
I had an hhgregg down the street from me for over 5 years. Never walked in. Always thought it was a furniture store from how it looks from the outside.
They also sold furniture. It wasn't a big part of business until right before it died. There was a huge attempt to increase the furniture business to increase profit margins
I’m always shocked to see that Hhgregg is even a thing. I only went to one location once when I was little (circa 2002-2004), so this store always felt like some weird fever dream I had years and years ago.
I went to an hhgregg a few years ago because I was looking for a new TV. It was only 2 minutes from a Best Buy which I had already gone to. The hhgregg was deserted and even though I was the only customer, the employees were disinterested and unhelpful. The prices for the same TVs I saw at Best Buy were much higher at hhgregg. They didn't have any signs up, nor did any employee mention that you could haggle. So I just left. It was probably one of the worst retail experiences I had. I ended up buying my TV from Best Buy. I never went back, and hhgregg had a bad reputation where I lived and no one was surprised when it closed down.
This just always seemed like a business that was destined to be abruptly liquidated and left abandoned for years scattered across the country. Much like Ames, Bradlees, Linens N Things, ect.
I learned the danger of aggressive over-expansion when I was in elementary school. Circle K convenience stores pooped up on almost every arterial road intersection, sometimes even at the smaller collector streets. They were everywhere. I remember overhearing some adults saying that the plan was just to build them everywhere to block out competitors then go back and close under-performing locations. Following an expansion from 1000 stores to almost 6000 ten years later the company filed Chapter 11 in 1990.
The top 3 reasons for hhgregg's failure: 1. Terrible name 2. The most annoying commercials ever 3. No reason to go there over somewhere like BrandsMart or Best Buy.
@@TheDr502 On the plus side, at least the music mashup community (especially SiivaGunner) has gotten a lot of mileage out of hhgregg's commercials. Take a look at this: th-cam.com/video/iYGTbrYi914/w-d-xo.html
You should do a video on Fry's electronics. Its an amazing electronics store that really doesn't seem to be well known. I grew up shopping there and think it is far superior to Best buy. I'd love to know the history.
I think Fry's is a bit of a quirky store. Monstrously huge, massive selection, plenty of upscale product to blend in with the affordable items. Only issue is the salespeople tend to be either high pressure toward service contracts or they just don't care. Really odd. To add, their computer and electronic parts prices are very high - I suspect they know they are the only game in town when you need repair parts.
I live in Tennessee, where we've had hhgreggs around for years. I never knew they were an electronics store. I thought they were a crafts store like Joann's or Michael's for some reason.
Riff Chick I thought the same thing when I heard of it. If I'm not mistaken, when I lived in PA, they took over Circuit City locations that had closed. Edit: I made this comment at the beginning of the video and so I was correct. They did take over the closed Circuit City stores.
Just wanted to say that I actually live in Indiana, and I've only seen hhgregg commercials like once or twice a year, usually around holidays. Really, that just adds more to why they failed, because their advertising wasn't really something that they focused on.
I'd like to see it. But honestly, it would be a simple video. A couple of people at the very top knew next to nothing about running a large restaurant chain. What makes a successful local or regional chain often (almost never) doesn't translate to a 1,000+ unit company.
I looooved hhgregg. But I grew up in the rural South where that was your "fanciest" tech option. Loved Kmart also. It seems failing companies rely on isolated areas for loyalty.
I'm an Ohioan (apparently where hhgregg was primarily at) and I've still never seen one. It was always an unpopular store, but I've never seen any in person lmao
Not sure how long you’ve been in Ohio, but back in the 90’s there would have been Sun TV & Appliances, a very similar chain of stores. They would likely have been acquired by hh gregg later as I saw many of their signs changed in the 2000’s.
U would think a business person would have plenty of money left over even after their busniess closed guess they were putting all they had towards it trying to save it I get it but thats not always the best choice though hence the monopoly example. People need to use company money to save the company, downsize, decrease spending, etc. Do whatever it takes to save the company without spending your own money you wanna be able to have the same lifestyle if it shuts down maybe even start a new company.
@@archivearranger8792 Not all estate sales are b/c someone died, although that is the most common reason. An estate sale may also occur because the property owner will be moving or has moved into a new residence where they will be unable to keep their property, such as an assisted living facility, a retirement community, a rest home, or the home of a family member. An estate sale may also take place because of divorce, foreclosure, or relocation.
They are DONE-DONE- AND DONE. Probably the most boring, lazy, and slip shod presentation in retail history! Each store was a wall wrap of flat panel display tv sets, and just a few computers in the center of overpriced accessory items. Appliances were to your left, and the sales clerks were there to up sell warranties. That's it....no thank you....good bye!!
BaldMaxx omg yes I forgot about the warranties! I worked at one and wasn’t a store clerk but I remember how hard they pushed the sales people to sell those damn warranties. They got big commission off it.
Your video is gold, simple, fluent and clear. One thing I would like to add to this video: the states where hhgreg located at were the states hit hard during the 2008 Economic downturn, the auto manufactures GM FORD and the appliance manufacturers lay off many people, so less or no income to buy and upgrade
They've closed down two different Staples locations in my town, and I hear most Office Depots are gone too: could you do a video on the mysterious decline of office supply stores?
it's really not that mysterious. Walmart, Target, and Amazon killed those businesses, along with places like Walgreens and CVS who also occasionally carry basic supplies.
The Office Depot that was around here was turned into an hhgregg. Now that is gone, too. Its now a Halloween Land (a store that pops up around October at different locations that sells costumes).
+Pac they would have done better letting it as Henry Harald Gregg instead of that shitty mess they made that looks like a user name of a 12 year old in call of Duty.
hhgregg is full of many examples that many college courses should be using as part of their business curriculum.... things that are important and should not do! Name of company is VERY important, what may work when the company is small, may not work on a much larger audience. Don't grow too fast! Don't buy more space than you can afford! Location, location, location! Don't be so close to your major competitors! A good example of this today.... Target! You will find many times, Target stores that is not in the same location as a Walmart, much busier with customers! The two stores are similar enough that people will shop at the one that is closest to them.... yea! O:-)
That's true. There are two Target stores about equally distant from my house. One is across the street from a Walmart, and the other is nowhere near a Walmart. Of course I go to the one by Walmart because nobody is ever there so it is easy to shop there. The other one is always slammed.
Yeah I’m in fancy places like near where I am in Scottsdale there are more targets cause Walmart is unappealing so both have a certain audience that they stick to
I live in Louisiana and saw one of these stores pop up out of nowhere in a shopping area that had been dying for years and had no previous understanding of what they did so I decided to check it out. I walked in and thought to myself "it's just a brighter, recolored Best Buy." I turned around and never went back.
When the hhgregg website at the beginning stages went live, they were selling out of date items for expensive prices. This was in late 2017, early 2018. Now looking into 2020 it’s more up to date, but the name is obscure as well. A few that I went to were pretty close to Best Buy within a 5 mile radius, so that really doesn’t help either.
I only went to hhgregg once, and wasn't impressed with it at all. The majority of the floor space was just refrigerators and washer-dryers so it seemed like everything else was an afterthought with little selection in electronics. I imagine that particular location did very poorly due to the very successful Best Buy down the street.
I went to hhgregg back in 2014 while waiting to have my car serviced. So to kill time, I decided to see what kind of products they were selling. When I walked in through the entrance, I was immediately approached by a sales associate looking to sell me a washer/dryer. I kindly told him no and that I was just browsing. A few minutes later, same thing happened again. And again. And again. You could tell the employees were desperately trying to push products. Even the manager offered his assistance. I got fed up and left. That was the first and last time I ever visited hhgregg. I can see why they went out of business. (Or, rather, converted to online ordering only.)
We *had* an hhgregg and it was very good with service, including delivery. Speaking of BB, yes ours is located just north of the mall (next to a Barnes & Nobles) while hhgregg was located on the back side of the mall; accessible but pretty well hidden if you didn't know it was there.
hhgregg got a new dryer to me in a 2 days. No one else could do that, always weeks. The service was great. They went more appliances later on. Maybe the thinking was that they thought appliances were more resilient in the brick and mortar domain, than electronics. The big problem they had was too much debt and not enough reserve from overexpansion.
I tried to get hired at one of these almost 8 years ago, I wore extremely high level, elite fashion clothes and they laughed at me and told me they wouldn't interview me until I came back with a suit and tie. That's when I knew that they were destined to become a thing of the past.
Clayton Frazier I second this. The corporate ownership of Winn-Dixie has changed hands a few times in recent history, and a lot of the locations in my area have closed up because they simply can't compete with the Wal-Marts around here.
It's amazing to see and learn about hhgregg's true colors, which are gray, but sometimes there's a rainbow within. I've never known much about hhgregg in my life (one location that I only went to the day before it closed) until I came across the Sbassbear parody commercial. There, I discovered real hhgregg commercials and was introduced to HH, the mascot! He is so cute (platonically), but even he couldn't clean the muddy grays of the store. I just discovered the grays through this very video. Thank you for opening my eyes. (I'm only into hhgregg for the memes and mascot, btw.)
Where I am in Kentucky we got our hhgregg in 2006. I think one of their major problems was they were commission based (the translation to "consultive educational experience") like Circuit City was before the early 2000s. The model (sales person talks to you about the floor model, does the sales order, you pick it up at the service desk) was obsolete in the late 90s and both Sears and Circuit City stopped using it (albeit this obviously was only part of their problems and Service Merchandise went completely out of business on this model). This practice was obnoxious and annoying but with the advent of the internet most consumers no longer needed someone to educate them about what models were the best. It was obnoxious and useless, something had to give. On a side note, isn't it crazy to know that not long ago someone working at a department or electronics store could make a living off commissions. Retail wasn't a minimum wage proposition back then. Also, it's worth noting that during the same time period you are referring to Best Buy almost went out of business as well. It took the founder coming back and changing things up to save them (even though I don't think they'll last another 15 years).
What is most interesting about your comment, the outline of the model "sales person talks to you about the floor model, does the sales order, you pick it up at the service desk"...replace that with "You access the website and look at the virtual floor model, pay for shipping, then pick the item up at the service desk" is THE currently exploding model of online sales/in store pickup. It really is no different, it just takes longer and costs more due to shipping.
Service Merchandise (and it's defunct competitor Best Products) have an interesting history. The reason why "catalog showrooms" existed was to get around minimum pricing rules imposed by the manufacturers/distributors of the products they sold. From The Spokesman-Review: "Catalog showrooms were born in the 1950s because of a unique set of conditions in retailing. Before the 1970s, federal and state fair trade laws allowed manufacturers to name a price for their products and force stores to stick to it. If Black & Decker decided a drill should sell for $50, stores had to price it at $50. Balky stores could be cut off by the manufacturer. The only stores not covered were wholesalers, who sold at a discount but not to the general public. Using that loophole, catalog showrooms set themselves up as wholesalers, but almost anyone could join and buy cheaper merchandise." www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/nov/09/catalog-showrooms-face-extinction-old-retail/
Dimitri Borozny it took Walmart longer to grow, because unlike Kmart and Target, who had their parent companies to help them expand, Ben Franklin refused to get into discounting, that Sam Walton had to go on his own with his discount store, that he named Walmart. I don't know how many stores they had by 1989, but they were beating Kmart in sales with fewer stores. Sam Walton was not in a hurry to expand the company the way the former SS Kresge did with Kmart, or Dayton Hudson did with Target. It was his children who did the massive expansion. Like Kmart, Walmart has saturated most of their markets. Kmart praked at just over 2300 stores before their downfall. I wouldn't be surprised if Walmart is close to, or over 3000, just with Walmart.
I worked with hhgregg from 2009-2016. It was a great “family” company when I started. It was publicly traded at the time and there were around 100 stores. The culture at the time was customer centric with a bias for aggressive sales. Our staffing model developed leaders/owners that were very company and staffing minded. Over the next five years the company metamorphosed into a corporate mess. It was hard to sustain good leaders at such rapid growth. The leadership that was tied to the original family eroded. To be completely honest, the company’s down turn happens when Jerry Throgmartin suddenly passed. He embodied what hhgregg was. He articulated everything we were with every word he said. He was a great leader and a visionary (I’m a little biased I loved the man and his family) Then we got an influx of Sears leadership, we lost sight of who we were. Eventually hhgregg became horribly staffed, horribly run organization with little to no self accountability. The core of our collapse was rapid expansion and poor brand recognition. We never got the advertising piece right. We changed our public persona at least 10 times when I was there. I loved that place, I loved the people, and at one time the talent we had was astounding. This makes me sad. But truth be told I’d do it all over again. Even though I went through the same exact thing at circuit city. Side note the very first “the city” store from circuit city’s final days makes an appearance in this video. I also loved “the city!” But that’s another story for another comment section!
We had 2 hhgreggs where I lived. We bought all our appliances/electronics there. They would seriously price match any price you could find and if the price dropped a couple months later they would give you the difference. It's a wonder they stayed open as long as they did.
Best Buy was known as the place that hired people at minimum wage who knew little or nothing about the products they sold. Circuit City was the store known for having higher paid, more knowledgeable staff. Circuit City, in order to compete with Amazon, decided to fire all of their knowledgeable staff and replace them with low paid know-nothings. So there was nothing to differentiate themselves anymore from Circuit City. They died. hhgregg could have been the replacement for Circuit City. But after Circuit City went belly-up, Best Buy starting giving their employees better training. I've been to Best Buy and some of them are still useless, but some sales staff actually know what they are talking about. My own thought is that we are entering a phase of increased monopolization. You either grow fast and succeed or you die. Whether you grow fast and succeed or die may be part luck, part based on what venture capital you can get, etc. A boring company like hhgregg from the midwest might just not have acquired sufficient venture capital to expand. Meanwhile hipster companies in Silicon Valley like Facebook, Google, and Amazon succeeded. There were many other companies doing similar things, but those are the ones that made it. Did they really do things better or were they black swans? The bad news for consumers in the long run is that some markets are being monopolized. If Amazon ever really takes off then we might be getting almost all our physical good from Amazon and all of our software/media products from Google. I hope it doesn't turn out that way.
You do this whole wind-up about how hhgregg isn't very well known in most places, and then: "Let me tell you about this store, It's a lot like Best Buy." [moves on] incredible comedy
Its funny you mention hhgregg trying to replace Circuit City in locations where they failed. Thats literally what happened at the location near where I lived in high school before that hhgregg also closed a few years later.
I remember looking at an HHGreg that opened at the same place Circuit City closed before and thinking... "So Circuit City failed at this location but you will do fine?"
That more than half of their sales came from appliances was interesting to me. That suggests half of the business was Amazon/Best Buy competition as you went into, but the other half was actually competing more with Home Depot and Lowe's. As someone who did a lot of remodeling over the past couple of years, there would have been zero chance I'd get everything taken care of at Home Depot or Lowe's, then go to hhgregg and spend time hagging with a salesperon on commission to maybe save a few dollars on the appliances.
Yep I can confirm as a Canadian moved here just recently I've never heard of these guys. But then again I never heard of Whattaburger either but they're delicious. Is hhgregg delicious? I don't think so, terrible name for a burger joint :P
Whataburger is primarily in Texas. I never heard of it until we moved here 8 years ago. It’s good but not the best. And I’ve never heard of hhgregg but I can safely say Whataburger is much more delicious than them lol.
I find it interesting that there exists multiple, competing stores for stationary & copies of papers (Staples, Office Depot, etc) but only one major big store for electronics. Best Buy lives while Circuit City, hhgregg & Radioshack fade from memory...
I grew up less than two miles away from a Micro Center - some of my friends even worked their while we were in high school. Never knew how lucky I was until I moved away from home and developed an interest in conputers.
I agree. The six Flags location that was the closest one to me was Six Flags: Kentucky Kingdom closed down. The story was that back in 2010 they forgot to pay for renting/using the land space so shortly after that it closed. But then in 2012 someone bought the old park and started on re-modeling. Then in 2014 it Re-opened as Kentucky Kingdom without the Six Flags ownership.
I hadn’t heard of hhgregg until they opened in my city in 2009. They opened in the same building that was a Circuit City, which had closed earlier in 2009 after about 15 years in operation. The building now houses a Burlington Coat Factory.
hhgregg and circuit city pretty much remind me of Fry's Electronics with their style. Fry's is next to fall under after having worked for them for almost 2 years and seeing the business model fall to heavy negelction.
They had just opened a location here (bumfuck nowhere) couple years back when I moved into town. They had the balls to open literally right behind Best Buy. I paid them a visit..., but their inventory was just hilariously and woefully ill thought out. I went in for a router. They sold some cheap shitty routers that could be beat by any ISP provided router. Also, they did not stock ethernet cables at this location. No idea what the hell they were thinking.
When I saw the title/company name, I thought the episode was going to be a joke, then I remembered it wasn't April 1st. Did a cat walk on their typewriter, and they just kept it because it looked similar to the name of the founder, but all one word and lower case?
I remember going to my local hhgregg during Christmas in July. I wanted a Panasonic blu-ray player for $99, but they only had them for $199. What a rip-off! Then I got hit with a snowball, IN JULY!!!
hhgregg? There might be one near me; I think? Driving by it is like seeing it in the background of a dream. It took this video to confirm that what I saw was real.
One key issue that killed hhgregg was the combination of high-pressure commission based salespeople and horrible customer service. The consumer simply stopped shopping there as they were totally fed up with the place. I am in Indiana where we've had a store here for decades and I stopped shopping there loooong ago. You can only keep a ghost town of a store open so long, relying on victims for customers, and keep the lights on. I do not miss them, and since the dishonest sales people were much of the problem, I didn't feel sorry for them when they closed.
I hate commission based sales places. I don't want to be chit chatted to by strangers. If i, rarely, really need to know something, ill come find you. Otherwise, let me be while I browse!
I sell appliances and don’t make commission. I’d rather customers go somewhere else if they want a grand tour and in-depth analysis about the appliances. Try google people, it’s not that hard to do your own research first. Surprisingly there are still customers who shop this way.
Your and idiot. First of all I worked at hhgregg part time. The company tells you to be aggressive and yes I agreed that was their downfall but their were really hard working people who were looking to feed their families. I don't blame the workers I blame the company. When you walk into the store there is an employee assigned to you right away next man up and you are told to do anything to make the sale. To say that you don't feel sorry for people who lost their jobs because of the idiots that are running the company is heartless. If you were only paid on commission you would be doing everything to make money. I seen people who had to go on welfare because of this and that hurts all of us. These big companies don't care about the employees or the hard workers they hurt. I feel sorry for every employee that was not making decisions for the company. Did you know that the CEO of the company jumped shipp 6 months before it closes because they put this company in the ground, if that's not a scumbag I don't know what is. I had another job so when it went under it didn't hurt me because I was doing for extra money but most people couldn't find other jobs because up until 30 days before they closed they lied to their employees and told them everything was fine and they weren't closing. My point is don't blame the employees blame the company. My heart goes out to everyone who lost their jobs.
Unlike a lot of commenters, I saw the title and knew the company. I didn’t know it went bankrupt or was closed. I did now realize I haven’t seen a commercial in a couple months though. Usually the news talks about it but I guess they didn’t even care...
hhgregg is like that feeling you get when you go into a lucid dream. UNSTOPPABLE. think about it, the ceo probably just said "EXPAND. YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE"
what happened? answer: they started selling furniture! i went in looking for electronic stuff and they tried selling me a couch. what? furniture & mattresses is being sold on almost every corner around me. they were entering an already saturated market but didnt do the weekly "best most amazing once in a lifetime get it while it lasts too good to miss" sales like the other guys in town are doing.
Oddly enough, I think that they really should have pushed the furniture aspect. It was something that really differentiated them from Best Buy. I never even knew them as an 'electronics shop', but as a mid range place to get furniture and appliances.
My current washer and dryer are from hhgregg. The purchase, negotiation, delivery and install experience were amazing. I am very happy with it. I was excited to see a new player in the market and happy to have purchased something from them. I still have my set and they still run great. Oh, I also have a really awesome entertainment center that I bought from them during the going out of business sale.
So that counter on their site just reset once it hit the date. It's on their official website so it seems very strange that something like that would happen. I have no clue what's going on there, please reply to this if you have any ideas.
Company Man probably thought it wouldn't be worth it
Company Man - I think they are building some e commerce website and hit some go live issue.
Company Man I guess circuit city is also going to open an e commerce website and follow the Amazon strategy for all sellers to use their website as a platform. Wonder of these guys can still compete with Amazon!
It's probably how the javascript/jQuery is done. I can look later
Company Man can u do a decline of video on Krispy kreme doughnuts
When your company's name looks like a typing error, it's hard to survive.
Hei I'm e- h hgreggg hwoa ahhr you
My mom calls it H-Craig
Sounds like someone's gamertag tbh
@@TheManinBlack9054 hhgregg was actually my name tag in a game, but when I found out hhgregg was a store, I quickly changed it. I didn’t need to be sued when I was still nine. 😂
The final version was dumb:
hhgregg
In earlier years, the logo was still all lower case (except for the first G), but I they at least had periods after the Hs. It read:
h.h. Gregg
Before that, it was in all caps and made more sense.
H.H. GREGG
Blame graphic designers for trying to make it look cool.
Hhgregg sounds like a youtuber
Who Else but Zane? Yeah a DRUNK TUBER at the time
Right?? Ahahaha. I was like 'this is a weird turn for the channel's focus' until I realized it was some weird east coast store I'd never heard of
HHgregg here AND IMMA NEED YOU TO SMASH THAT LIKE BUTTON LETS TRY AND GET 5000 LIKES THIS TIME
hhgregg looks like somebody has a sticky keyboard.
Odd
“What’s up, hhgregg here, be sure to smash that like button, subscribe and join the notification squad for savings like a Panasonic Blu-ray for $99.”
hh Gregg will always have a special place in my heart.... they helped me jump start my car after my battery died on my way home from buying a tv at Best Buy
😢 that's a beautiful story.
@@NicoleJacksonnoj100 not really lol
@HHhhgreggomg, it’s the real HH from hhgregg
Was very glad to see this company die. They were the #1 "bait-n-switch" operation in the Eastern part of the country. Constantly and consistently they would advertise discounted product which was NOT in the stores - and when you got there it was always "oh gosh, we just sold out of that. Instead you should buy ..." as they point to a more expensive product. Real scum bags.
Yep they're back online, probably some company bought their trademark and trying to capitalize on it.
Unfortunately, the internet has killed a lot of brick 'n mortal business... some for good while others not so much. I sad to see all the small mom 'n pops businesses go, which were the staple in many neighborhoods who actually cared about their customers. :(
Darcy Dilbart really ? I always had good experiences with them 🤷🏻♂️
Bill A hhgregg doesn’t give a damn about no one😂
r/boneappletea
Totally agree. Also the salesman who ignored you if you weren't there to buy a big ticket item..we went once to buy a toaster oven there once, was greeted at door by one of their salespeople and when asked what I was looking for , I told him a toaster oven, he looked down at me pointed in a direction and said " I think they are over there someplace" and walked away, and I turned around and walked out!
Its name seems to be the result of someone mashing the keyboard in frustration after hours of bad company name ideas.
We need to open a store called sim61642
S Or sunvhjfz844265
Yeah ! , We will sell flat beer !
It's after the founder.
A store called gjsmb3ixiw939
As a former employee of 3 years I can honestly say I'm glad the company is dead and gone. Turn over rate was high. Draw vs commission was the devil's handshake rate of pay. And management was terrible in my experience. Bait and switch was all we could do to try and make a living. Never will I work electronics retail again because of hhgregg.
Yes to all of this. I used to work there also. Management was awful
I use to work there. I never had to worry about the draw pay lol. Was making 2500$ paychecks as the top salesman there almost every month lol. It was cut throat for sure. The management sucked because they didn’t pay them well and they’d be envious of the top sales people. Also once they changed the commissions up a bit towards the end that changed it all. Then they started firing and letting the best sales people go for the silliest things. The managers prob made so many folks miserable and quit too. I miss selling them beds too lol Serta paid me real good 👍 and always sell the accessories too. Honestly for people who even touched draw pay once or twice they’d struggle the whole time and I knew it was rough af. My buddy had many times where he was in draw and man that would suck
I agree also a former employee of 3 years and everything you say is true..terrible company
Hhgregg sounds like some kid smacked their head on a keyboard
Or their cat walked over the keys.
or when someone rages or pretends to hack
Or when you made a typo
no
Hhgghghhg
They had a branding problem I thought they sold clothes.
Me too. I think it was the logo
Clearly. With a terrible name like that
same
They got a firm Oshkasbagosh vibe
same
One of these hh gregg appliance stores opened up a few years back near us. We went in one day and bought an item. Later on we returned the item, and were given a store credit card. Fine, right? Nope. I went back to buy another item. The gum chewing clerk would NOT honor the store credit card "oh we can't get the credit card to work" was the excuse. We became disgusted with their slimy, shady tactics, since their manager seemed to be about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine. We told them and the other 3 customers in the store how we felt and how we wouldn't be back. They didn't like this and herded us to the door. "We'll see how fast your business closes" was what I said as we stalked out to our car. Sure enough, the store was closed within a year.
I get this isn’t a joke comment but I accidentally read “slimy, shady” as slim shady
They are a scam company :) iam glad they are gone for good
"their manager seemed to be about as helpful as a screen door on a submarine" HOLY SHIT LOL that is so fucking true lmao.
Is your real name Karen?
Karen is that you
An HHGreg store replaced a massive Best Buy in my area. They had a digital camera sale as an opening flyer/newspaper ad that young me was really excited about so I went into the store and was immediately swarmed by four employees with no other customers. They said they didn't have any and the sales person never saw the camera before. They got the manager and I found the camera displayed for more than the advertised price in the case and told them that was the one. The manager offered to sell me the display model without any cables or even the box but said they didn't have any, never got any, and MIGHT get them in the next shipment from corporate which was two weeks away.
I went to an electronics store down the street who needed to call to price match the ad. When they called the HHGreg I was just at and asked about the price HHGreg denied having ever carried that model of camera.
And that was the beginning and end of our local HHGreg, they must've done that bait and switch to a number of customers because even on massive sales the place was empty and was closed within two years.
Hhh
Uu
Excited over nothing lol
I went into HHGregg twice, and both times the employees ignored me and wouldn't help when I needed it.
Wow, that sucks.
Ditto!
Damn my experience was the opposite, the store was empty and like four employees swarmed me and asked me if I needed help with anything, one by one they all asked me. Ugh
@@brittneyelizabeth12 No he's Pikachu (grabs popcorn)
I have a brother in law who worked for hhgregg, and over the years I got a few nuggets from him.
hhgregg wasn't a dedicated electronics store to the degree of Best Buy. They sold mattresses and other stuff as well. My brother in law said that basically, hhgregg cherry picked the highest margin items that other Big Box stores and dept. stores would sell, and sold those. The downside of that is that they were kind of like a baseball player who always swings for home runs but gets alot of strikeouts and pop flies along the way.
This also meant that consumers weren't always clear what hhgregg was. You mentioned the lack of recognition a few times, but when you walk in and see a substantial chunk of the store dedicated to random non-electronics stuff, you're probably more confused than you were before.
Second, you mentioned that sales staff had the power to haggle. They were actually ENCOURAGED to haggle, all the way down to selling something for a penny above cost. The idea was that they feared that if a customer left the store, they'd just buy the item online, so better to get them to buy it now at hhgregg, give them a deal and hope that brings them back in the future. This undermined the fact that they were concentrating in high margin items since sales staff would give up those margins pretty regularly.
aah so like an american harvey nornan?
I went to an hhgregg near me, I couldn’t figure out if it was a shitty furniture store, an electronic store, it had no identity what so ever. There were no customers, and the help wasn’t all that great.
Yeah, I'm from Indiana, and the one time I visited an hhgregg, I got the impression it was more a furniture and appliance store that also sold some electronics. Unlike the pictures shown here, the floor I remember was about 50% appliances, 25% furniture, and 25% everything else. This was in the 90's, though, so possibly they tried to shift their emphasis and failed?
Western PA, it was garbage here too
Mark L I used to work at hhgregg right before they shut down. For some reason they kept cutting back on electronics and added more furniture, and yes, it was shitty, more than 1/2 of it was returned because it would fall apart in a matter of weeks.
Oh, the employee's were a help...They helped ram their heads up your ass the second you walk in, the second you stop to look at anything....literally was a pain in the ass. They made commission, which I believe when they would be allowed to haggle over the price, it was probably their commission they were cutting into, when they would drop the price for you.
I liked going in there, and checking out the newest TV's, but I hated walking into the store, because I hated being bothered by an employee, when All I wanted to do was look, and when I knew more about electronics than they did.
Oh, and anything that wasn't a major piece of equipment ( TV, Fridge, Washers ) was expensive as fuck? needed a 4 foot HDMI cable? $25. And they didn't stock or sell lower priced "cheaper" cables either. They were always expensive as fuck.
Though it does kinda suck they went out of business, because where I live, the closest best buy is a good 30+ minute drive one way. So they were the only place to buy TV's, if you didn't want to buy a cheap ass TV from Walmart.
Marth I had the same experience (South NJ). It was a mixture of different stores and the employees were awful. My mom had a question about something and the associate said "Ok just wait one second" to go find the answer which is normal. But he literally never came back. Walked by her a few times and that was it. She swore never to go in there again lol. Another thing I noticed was that most of the staff was young African American guys, which isn't a negative thing, but it was a bit strange as usually most Best Buy's I go into have people from many races and ages groups. It honestly felt like a black person was the manager and just hired their family members without any regard of how they'll work. Whatever it was, the service was really awful. The people at my Best Buy, young, old, white, black, hispanic, etc. I've never had bad service there ever.
I think this might be because of this rapid expansion mentioned in the video. They may not have cared much about who they hired because their number one priority was opening stores and having any sort of staff. Makes sense to see you had the same experience.
I worked at hhgregg for a little over a year until they shut down in May. They made a lot of mistakes. 1. They shifted focus from electronics to furniture for some reason 2. they used a 3rd party delivery/installation company whose employees had 0 vested interest in hhgregg so they didn't really care if the delivery was on time or even completed at all and in many cases they didn't do the installation correctly. 3. They didn't have full time employees other than management and commissioned sales people and offered very little benefits. 4. Their return policy was horrible and if a customer had issues with an appliance they would have to send it to be serviced leaving the customer S.O.L. until it was fixed which could take up to 2 or 3 weeks. This company basically was run by idiots and it got what was coming.
Andy Mann
What happens to every large company ran by low intelligence MBAs.
I worked there about a year. I think they expanded too quickly and didn't do enough advertising as well. Many hhgreggs didn't even have a sign showing drivers that a store was located nearby and you hardly ever saw ads on TV. The commission vs. draw system also contributed to the decline and resulted in high turnover when salespeople couldn't get out of draw due to low customer volume.
Also, like many department stores, they didn't invest enough in the online marketplace, and that eventually caught up with them. Often times salespeople would steal online orders and sell the products themselves to get commission, resulting in angry online shoppers who wanted to know where their product was. They also attempted to price match Walmart and Amazon which hurt the commission of sales people and ultimately was a losing game.
They also invested too much in furniture, much of it very overpriced. They really should have stuck with appliances and electronics. Also, they should have replaced the draw system with a commission plus hourly wage to reduce staff turnover. They should have focused on customer service, not price matching Walmart, and they should have done more advertising.
My thought as well. When the local warehouse closed and they got outsourced delivery, it went downhill.
Why did hhgregg fail? (I worked there for 5 years):
1. Intense price competition. In my area hhg had a reputation for "wheeling and dealing" with the customer to get a sale (almost like running a used car dealership). When the margins were higher that wasn't a problem and you could make a very good living at hhg, but when Amazon and Walmart invaded the electronics business and Lowe's and Home Depot started poaching our turf it became impossible to maintain our margins due to our policy of meeting and beating the competition.
2 (related to point one): An over-reliance on selling "Premium Service Plans" due to falling margins/commissions.
3. An ineffective internet business plan that undercut the stores and the 100% commissioned based sales team. The fact that customers started picking our brains for advice and "show-rooming" us before they bought on Amazon or at Walmart didn't help either. Most of the customers who bought on our web site fell into two categories. A. Someone who did not want us to bother them at all when they picked up their orders (particularly if we pitched the "Plan") or B. The one I dreaded far more: The customer who did not know very much about what they had bought and wanted me to explain it all to them. As a commissioned salesperson I received ZERO compensation for this and it took a significant amount of time away from the sales floor. Is it "my job" to do so? Just ask the store sales manager about sales "productivity" (particularly when you go into "draw") and margins and your answer would be NO. I didn't like working for free and I bet you don't either. You can make it up by making a few big sales? Again, NO. store margins got too tight and commissions dwindled accordingly. You could sell a $3000 TV and make maybe $50-75 bucks on it depending on the store's profit.
4. A failed over-expansion of our store base.
5. Our foray into furniture. Why? (refer to points 1 and 2 above). We were't very good at it or the cell phone business either (product mix/quality and delivery/activation service).
6. I agree that delivery/installation was a nightmare. The warehouses also had insufficient stock of popular items.
HHG taught me a lot about sales, which I appreciate. But I hope I never have to work like that ever again.
And you have to wonder who is going to go to work for them now in their "revamped" mode, especially at the management level?
I grew up a stones throw away from their Indianapolis HQ. At one point, in the SAME PARKING LOT there was a Best Buy, a Circuit City, and an HHGregg. It was like a freaking commerce gang fight and it was incredible.
Bet all the employees hated each other
yeah holy crap @@Unicornmazda
classic bait n switch...their "specials" were ALWAYS sold out...yeah, man, we just sold the last one 15 minutes ago...
John Dee Smith yes, bait and switch
They are a scam electronic store :) bye hhgregg
John Dee Smith as a former employee this is very true. Only had limited stock at a great price to get you in them BAM oops we just sold out lemme sell you something more expensive
hhgregg was still here in Indy in 2016 when I moved here, but closed in 2017 I think. The Yelp reviews were like you all said bait and switch big time.
hhgregg is finished. Once a company removes their physical stores and becomes online only... Well, we've seen what happened with Blockbuster and the revamped Circuit City.
"Revamped" as in slowly dying?
"Revamped" as in the store chain went bankrupt a decade ago, then someone bought the name last year and restored it as a website.
Although both descriptions would work, since no one has been shopping at the new CC.
Amazon?
That company started out as online in the first place. It's not the same.
And amazon is into all kinds of stuff.
In my city there was an hhgregg that opened in the building that used to be Circuit City and before that was a Radio Shack. It also happened to be right across the street from Best Buy...
Sounds like we’re from the same place lol
mine was a Circuit City first then an hhgreggs, now it's a Michel's Arts and Crafts. BestBuy across the street the whole time.
@@cliftontaylor7570 The Circuit City/Radio Shack/hhgregg in my town has a Michael’s directly beside it lol
the company name sucks, that was my first tought.
Ashiente I thought that was a placeholder until I saw the thumbnail 😂😂
I seriously thought he just typed gibberish.
The name doesn't really describe anything that would make want to visit their store. I don't like Best Buy, but at least their name is somewhat descriptive. They offer low prices.
I read it as "The Decline of hnnngh"
It's unique.
SAVE ON EVERYTHING AT CHRISTMAS IN JULY
HHHHHHHHGREGG
PANASONIC BLU RAY 99$
HHHHHHHHGREGG
RainbowRider : Mapping LCD 32 INCH TV 299
42 INCH HD TV 489
"H h -" *gets hit by snowball* "snowball in july?"
*CHUCKLE*
"HHGREGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
*JAZZ HANDS*
I'm in Missouri and you're correct. I've heard of them but never knew what they were. I legit thought they were a clothing store or a TJMAXX kind of store
Same lol
Same
For some reason I always thought hhgreggs sold men’s clothing
GoD Razz Some locations did, like Ralph Lauren type brands. Never sure why but they did
Same
Me too, but not mens. I just thought it was clothing.
I thought it was some kind of American grocery store chain for some reason?
Ya so did I lol..
The Monopoly analogy was brilliant.
Stardust Nova Not really, well not for me at least. I will buy every plot until I have no more then I mortgage the previous plots and then slowly put then back into business when I am low in money I mortgage it and then I just repeat until I am the winner. I haven't lost yet with this strategy.
LifelessHawk id just buy boardwalk.
Isaac Fielding If you get the dark blue then you are set for the game
And there's a hair in the picture
"hhgregg" sounds like someone vomiting
That is what hhgregg is equivilant to
damnit i just commented that...
Sounds like someone's gamertag tbh
Oops I thought hhgregg was a clothing store
Todomo Games I thought I was the only one. Thank goodness. XD
Same XD
I thought it was a grocery store
So did I, until I walked into one. Maybe a change in logo would have helped.
Lol. So did I
I had an hhgregg down the street from me for over 5 years. Never walked in. Always thought it was a furniture store from how it looks from the outside.
seporokey yea about the same story my town even had a circuit city
seporokey I thought I was the only one!
From the logo I always thought it was a kids or tween clothing brand
They also sold furniture. It wasn't a big part of business until right before it died. There was a huge attempt to increase the furniture business to increase profit margins
It even sounds like a furniture store.
I’m always shocked to see that Hhgregg is even a thing. I only went to one location once when I was little (circa 2002-2004), so this store always felt like some weird fever dream I had years and years ago.
I went to an hhgregg a few years ago because I was looking for a new TV. It was only 2 minutes from a Best Buy which I had already gone to. The hhgregg was deserted and even though I was the only customer, the employees were disinterested and unhelpful. The prices for the same TVs I saw at Best Buy were much higher at hhgregg. They didn't have any signs up, nor did any employee mention that you could haggle. So I just left. It was probably one of the worst retail experiences I had. I ended up buying my TV from Best Buy. I never went back, and hhgregg had a bad reputation where I lived and no one was surprised when it closed down.
Your voice is perfect for narrating these mini documentary videos! Love your channel!
He talks pretty slow though so I have to change the video speed to 1.25x
His narration style is good at conveying those wtf turning point moments.
Project Rawrrr that's interesting. My device doesn't give me that option. I think he does a good job speaking though.
This just always seemed like a business that was destined to be abruptly liquidated and left abandoned for years scattered across the country. Much like Ames, Bradlees, Linens N Things, ect.
I learned the danger of aggressive over-expansion when I was in elementary school. Circle K convenience stores pooped up on almost every arterial road intersection, sometimes even at the smaller collector streets. They were everywhere. I remember overhearing some adults saying that the plan was just to build them everywhere to block out competitors then go back and close under-performing locations. Following an expansion from 1000 stores to almost 6000 ten years later the company filed Chapter 11 in 1990.
💩
haha pooped up
The top 3 reasons for hhgregg's failure:
1. Terrible name
2. The most annoying commercials ever
3. No reason to go there over somewhere like BrandsMart or Best Buy.
1.its a scam
2. i t s a s c a m
3. *d u d e i t s a f u c k i n g s c a m l o l*
Ah, yes. hhgregg commercials. I always loved the changing the channel whenever those came on.
Leo Wiseman The fourth reason, a few were in close proximity to Best Buy’s.
@@TheDr502 On the plus side, at least the music mashup community (especially SiivaGunner) has gotten a lot of mileage out of hhgregg's commercials. Take a look at this: th-cam.com/video/iYGTbrYi914/w-d-xo.html
BRANDSMART!!!! YES!! I haven't seen one of those since I left Ft. Lauderdale!
You should do a video on Fry's electronics. Its an amazing electronics store that really doesn't seem to be well known. I grew up shopping there and think it is far superior to Best buy. I'd love to know the history.
They're still doing pretty well.
I’ve never been to Fry’s, but I remember years ago, I’d read about the stores and I always thought people were trying to type out FYE lol
I've only ever seen fry's near and around San Diego.
I think Fry's is a bit of a quirky store. Monstrously huge, massive selection, plenty of upscale product to blend in with the affordable items. Only issue is the salespeople tend to be either high pressure toward service contracts or they just don't care. Really odd. To add, their computer and electronic parts prices are very high - I suspect they know they are the only game in town when you need repair parts.
may fry's burn to the ground. (really depends on the store and its personnel.)
I've never heard of hhgreg so when I saw the title, it looked like you had a seizure while typing the title.
Enclave Soldier calm mate no reason to be mean.
Enclave Soldier god your dumb
Xerxes bruh moment
“So tell us the story of the company called hhgregg”
hmm... it’s a lot like Best Buy
I live in Tennessee, where we've had hhgreggs around for years. I never knew they were an electronics store. I thought they were a crafts store like Joann's or Michael's for some reason.
prolly bc they usually open near a michaels
hhgregg is an ELECTRONICS store?! I thought it was clothes or something!
me too
i thought it was furniture
Riff Chick I thought the same thing when I heard of it. If I'm not mistaken, when I lived in PA, they took over Circuit City locations that had closed.
Edit: I made this comment at the beginning of the video and so I was correct. They did take over the closed Circuit City stores.
I thought so too.
Me too. It just sounds like it should be the name of a clothing store.
I went into an HHGregg twice,both times as soon as I entered the store a salesman attacked me,after that I told myself to never go in there again.
Panasonic bluray!
Christmas in July!
99 DOLLARS
32 inch LCD tv $299
EVERYTHINGS ON SALE ON CHRISTMAS IN JULY HHHH HH * OOF*
A SNOW BALL IN JULY? HH GREEEEEEEG!
HHHHH H H GREGG!!!
Literally, the only thing good that came out of that was the mascot and memes.
Just wanted to say that I actually live in Indiana, and I've only seen hhgregg commercials like once or twice a year, usually around holidays. Really, that just adds more to why they failed, because their advertising wasn't really something that they focused on.
upon seeing this video’s title:
me, an intellectual: ‘what is hhkhkrrkhg’
Yessss I love your vids. My favorites are the "The Decline Of... What happened?" Keep up the good work!!
How about doing one on the decline of Ruby Tuesday
I'd like to see it. But honestly, it would be a simple video. A couple of people at the very top knew next to nothing about running a large restaurant chain. What makes a successful local or regional chain often (almost never) doesn't translate to a 1,000+ unit company.
I think applebees is going the same pathway
I love their salad bar and wish they had more locations.
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday who could hang a name on you
NOOOOOOOOOOOO I love Ruby's me and my family go there a lot.
I looooved hhgregg. But I grew up in the rural South where that was your "fanciest" tech option. Loved Kmart also. It seems failing companies rely on isolated areas for loyalty.
Now where am I going to get my Sonic Bluray for $99 dollars?
Panasonic
*sonic bluray*
Target 😆
@@jimsuniverse4954 it isn't the same though... It just doesn't feel right...
My local hhgregg is being turned into an Aldi.
MIne got turned into a trampoline place for kids to go. I can't imagine that model working very well either with today's ADD kids.
@@yaimavol mine too are you in NC?
Mine turned into a trampoline park lol
@@xandersoad14 ye mine got turned into urban air
yaimavol you must live in Georgia
I'm an Ohioan (apparently where hhgregg was primarily at) and I've still never seen one. It was always an unpopular store, but I've never seen any in person lmao
i’ve seen one in Cincinnati, near eastgate
Not sure how long you’ve been in Ohio, but back in the 90’s there would have been Sun TV & Appliances, a very similar chain of stores. They would likely have been acquired by hh gregg later as I saw many of their signs changed in the 2000’s.
The owner of HH Gregg lived down the street from us until recently... we went to their estate sale a few months ago...
Ouch
U would think a business person would have plenty of money left over even after their busniess closed guess they were putting all they had towards it trying to save it I get it but thats not always the best choice though hence the monopoly example. People need to use company money to save the company, downsize, decrease spending, etc. Do whatever it takes to save the company without spending your own money you wanna be able to have the same lifestyle if it shuts down maybe even start a new company.
Kevin Swartz Your story makes me very happy. They treated their employees like shit. He got what was coming to him.
@@Musicvidsetc Only bad people die?
@@archivearranger8792 Not all estate sales are b/c someone died, although that is the most common reason. An estate sale may also occur because the property owner will be moving or has moved into a new residence where they will be unable to keep their property, such as an assisted living facility, a retirement community, a rest home, or the home of a family member. An estate sale may also take place because of divorce, foreclosure, or relocation.
They are DONE-DONE- AND DONE. Probably the most boring, lazy, and slip shod presentation in retail history! Each store was a wall wrap of flat panel display tv sets, and just a few computers in the center of overpriced accessory items. Appliances were to your left, and the sales clerks were there to up sell warranties. That's it....no thank you....good bye!!
BaldMaxx omg yes I forgot about the warranties! I worked at one and wasn’t a store clerk but I remember how hard they pushed the sales people to sell those damn warranties. They got big commission off it.
Your video is gold, simple, fluent and clear. One thing I would like to add to this video: the states where hhgreg located at were the states hit hard during the 2008 Economic downturn, the auto manufactures GM FORD and the appliance manufacturers lay off many people, so less or no income to buy and upgrade
They've closed down two different Staples locations in my town, and I hear most Office Depots are gone too: could you do a video on the mysterious decline of office supply stores?
it's really not that mysterious. Walmart, Target, and Amazon killed those businesses, along with places like Walgreens and CVS who also occasionally carry basic supplies.
The Office Depot that was around here was turned into an hhgregg. Now that is gone, too. Its now a Halloween Land (a store that pops up around October at different locations that sells costumes).
they have become obsolete thats what happens
Dunder Mifflin is taking over! People Person's Paper People
theres still a buncha office depots in the philippines but theyre mostly in urban places
Did someone have a seizure on the keyboard while naming the company?
No. It's Henry Harald Gregg shortened together, failed attempt at being funny
+Pac
they would have done better letting it as Henry Harald Gregg instead of that shitty mess they made that looks like a user name of a 12 year old in call of Duty.
hha hha
Conga when I saw the title I straight up thought that maybe they pressed random letters and said "well this will get people talking"
I'd like to see one on Piggly Wiggly.
Haha. I just like typing Piggly Wiggly.
piggly wiggly
so silly
Piggly wiggly
lol I like that
Piggly wiggly
I see why you like typing that
Piggly Wiggly
I think I like
Didn't Piggly Wiggly and Winn-Dixie merge?
hhgregg is full of many examples that many college courses should be using as part of their business curriculum.... things that are important and should not do! Name of company is VERY important, what may work when the company is small, may not work on a much larger audience. Don't grow too fast! Don't buy more space than you can afford! Location, location, location! Don't be so close to your major competitors! A good example of this today.... Target! You will find many times, Target stores that is not in the same location as a Walmart, much busier with customers! The two stores are similar enough that people will shop at the one that is closest to them.... yea! O:-)
So you are a business corporation expert
That's true. There are two Target stores about equally distant from my house. One is across the street from a Walmart, and the other is nowhere near a Walmart. Of course I go to the one by Walmart because nobody is ever there so it is easy to shop there. The other one is always slammed.
What about drugstores and gas stations? Competitors are always within 200ft of each other
Yeah I’m in fancy places like near where I am in Scottsdale there are more targets cause Walmart is unappealing so both have a certain audience that they stick to
I live in Louisiana and saw one of these stores pop up out of nowhere in a shopping area that had been dying for years and had no previous understanding of what they did so I decided to check it out. I walked in and thought to myself "it's just a brighter, recolored Best Buy."
I turned around and never went back.
When the hhgregg website at the beginning stages went live, they were selling out of date items for expensive prices. This was in late 2017, early 2018. Now looking into 2020 it’s more up to date, but the name is obscure as well. A few that I went to were pretty close to Best Buy within a 5 mile radius, so that really doesn’t help either.
Can you do a video on the decline of Hastings, please?
I loved their stores so much, and I was so sad when the one by my old university closed down.
I only went to hhgregg once, and wasn't impressed with it at all. The majority of the floor space was just refrigerators and washer-dryers so it seemed like everything else was an afterthought with little selection in electronics. I imagine that particular location did very poorly due to the very successful Best Buy down the street.
I went to hhgregg back in 2014 while waiting to have my car serviced. So to kill time, I decided to see what kind of products they were selling. When I walked in through the entrance, I was immediately approached by a sales associate looking to sell me a washer/dryer. I kindly told him no and that I was just browsing. A few minutes later, same thing happened again. And again. And again. You could tell the employees were desperately trying to push products. Even the manager offered his assistance. I got fed up and left. That was the first and last time I ever visited hhgregg. I can see why they went out of business. (Or, rather, converted to online ordering only.)
We *had* an hhgregg and it was very good with service, including delivery. Speaking of BB, yes ours is located just north of the mall (next to a Barnes & Nobles) while hhgregg was located on the back side of the mall; accessible but pretty well hidden if you didn't know it was there.
hhgregg got a new dryer to me in a 2 days. No one else could do that, always weeks. The service was great.
They went more appliances later on. Maybe the thinking was that they thought appliances were more resilient in the brick and mortar domain, than electronics. The big problem they had was too much debt and not enough reserve from overexpansion.
I tried to get hired at one of these almost 8 years ago, I wore extremely high level, elite fashion clothes and they laughed at me and told me they wouldn't interview me until I came back with a suit and tie.
That's when I knew that they were destined to become a thing of the past.
😂😂😂😂😂
Winn-Dixie, would be an interesting company to do next.
Clayton Frazier I second this. The corporate ownership of Winn-Dixie has changed hands a few times in recent history, and a lot of the locations in my area have closed up because they simply can't compete with the Wal-Marts around here.
Clayton Frazier I’ll third this as Winn-Dixie has been gone from the Louisville Kentucky metro area for a good 15+ years.
I've still got one with plenty of business here
Winn-Dixie has a Spanish subsidiary, "Fresco y Màs" here in the Miami area. I like those much better than the standard Winn-Dixie store.
@@ChadQuick270W There is one in downtown Louisville
Lived in America all my life>
Lived on the east coast all my life
What the hell is hhgregg?
Bad Incorporated their marketing was horrid.
Maybe ur 2 years old?
it's a store
Johnny Doeboy Fuck yeah, lmao
What state do you live in?
It's amazing to see and learn about hhgregg's true colors, which are gray, but sometimes there's a rainbow within.
I've never known much about hhgregg in my life (one location that I only went to the day before it closed) until I came across the Sbassbear parody commercial.
There, I discovered real hhgregg commercials and was introduced to HH, the mascot! He is so cute (platonically), but even he couldn't clean the muddy grays of the store. I just discovered the grays through this very video. Thank you for opening my eyes.
(I'm only into hhgregg for the memes and mascot, btw.)
Where I am in Kentucky we got our hhgregg in 2006. I think one of their major problems was they were commission based (the translation to "consultive educational experience") like Circuit City was before the early 2000s. The model (sales person talks to you about the floor model, does the sales order, you pick it up at the service desk) was obsolete in the late 90s and both Sears and Circuit City stopped using it (albeit this obviously was only part of their problems and Service Merchandise went completely out of business on this model). This practice was obnoxious and annoying but with the advent of the internet most consumers no longer needed someone to educate them about what models were the best. It was obnoxious and useless, something had to give. On a side note, isn't it crazy to know that not long ago someone working at a department or electronics store could make a living off commissions. Retail wasn't a minimum wage proposition back then.
Also, it's worth noting that during the same time period you are referring to Best Buy almost went out of business as well. It took the founder coming back and changing things up to save them (even though I don't think they'll last another 15 years).
What is most interesting about your comment, the outline of the model "sales person talks to you about the floor model, does the sales order, you pick it up at the service desk"...replace that with "You access the website and look at the virtual floor model, pay for shipping, then pick the item up at the service desk" is THE currently exploding model of online sales/in store pickup.
It really is no different, it just takes longer and costs more due to shipping.
Service Merchandise (and it's defunct competitor Best Products) have an interesting history. The reason why "catalog showrooms" existed was to get around minimum pricing rules imposed by the manufacturers/distributors of the products they sold.
From The Spokesman-Review:
"Catalog showrooms were born in the 1950s because of a unique set of conditions in retailing.
Before the 1970s, federal and state fair trade laws allowed manufacturers to name a price for their products and force stores to stick to it. If Black & Decker decided a drill should sell for $50, stores had to price it at $50. Balky stores could be cut off by the manufacturer.
The only stores not covered were wholesalers, who sold at a discount but not to the general public.
Using that loophole, catalog showrooms set themselves up as wholesalers, but almost anyone could join and buy cheaper merchandise."
www.spokesman.com/stories/1996/nov/09/catalog-showrooms-face-extinction-old-retail/
Amazon raided Walmart and hired all of their distribution experts to jump start their model.
Dimitri Borozny it took Walmart longer to grow, because unlike Kmart and Target, who had their parent companies to help them expand, Ben Franklin refused to get into discounting, that Sam Walton had to go on his own with his discount store, that he named Walmart. I don't know how many stores they had by 1989, but they were beating Kmart in sales with fewer stores. Sam Walton was not in a hurry to expand the company the way the former SS Kresge did with Kmart, or Dayton Hudson did with Target. It was his children who did the massive expansion. Like Kmart, Walmart has saturated most of their markets. Kmart praked at just over 2300 stores before their downfall. I wouldn't be surprised if Walmart is close to, or over 3000, just with Walmart.
I worked with hhgregg from 2009-2016. It was a great “family” company when I started. It was publicly traded at the time and there were around 100 stores. The culture at the time was customer centric with a bias for aggressive sales. Our staffing model developed leaders/owners that were very company and staffing minded. Over the next five years the company metamorphosed into a corporate mess. It was hard to sustain good leaders at such rapid growth. The leadership that was tied to the original family eroded. To be completely honest, the company’s down turn happens when Jerry Throgmartin suddenly passed. He embodied what hhgregg was. He articulated everything we were with every word he said. He was a great leader and a visionary (I’m a little biased I loved the man and his family) Then we got an influx of Sears leadership, we lost sight of who we were. Eventually hhgregg became horribly staffed, horribly run organization with little to no self accountability. The core of our collapse was rapid expansion and poor brand recognition. We never got the advertising piece right. We changed our public persona at least 10 times when I was there. I loved that place, I loved the people, and at one time the talent we had was astounding. This makes me sad. But truth be told I’d do it all over again. Even though I went through the same exact thing at circuit city.
Side note the very first “the city” store from circuit city’s final days makes an appearance in this video. I also loved “the city!” But that’s another story for another comment section!
We had 2 hhgreggs where I lived. We bought all our appliances/electronics there. They would seriously price match any price you could find and if the price dropped a couple months later they would give you the difference. It's a wonder they stayed open as long as they did.
Best Buy was known as the place that hired people at minimum wage who knew little or nothing about the products they sold. Circuit City was the store known for having higher paid, more knowledgeable staff. Circuit City, in order to compete with Amazon, decided to fire all of their knowledgeable staff and replace them with low paid know-nothings. So there was nothing to differentiate themselves anymore from Circuit City. They died.
hhgregg could have been the replacement for Circuit City. But after Circuit City went belly-up, Best Buy starting giving their employees better training. I've been to Best Buy and some of them are still useless, but some sales staff actually know what they are talking about.
My own thought is that we are entering a phase of increased monopolization. You either grow fast and succeed or you die. Whether you grow fast and succeed or die may be part luck, part based on what venture capital you can get, etc. A boring company like hhgregg from the midwest might just not have acquired sufficient venture capital to expand. Meanwhile hipster companies in Silicon Valley like Facebook, Google, and Amazon succeeded. There were many other companies doing similar things, but those are the ones that made it. Did they really do things better or were they black swans?
The bad news for consumers in the long run is that some markets are being monopolized. If Amazon ever really takes off then we might be getting almost all our physical good from Amazon and all of our software/media products from Google. I hope it doesn't turn out that way.
Man, this comment is really funny, only one year later.
The future is now
Hhgregg is a dyslexic’s worst nightmare
hrgghge
“I ran some quick figures & that’s not even half the states” lmaooooo
everytime i think of the name "hhgreg" i hear PANASONIC BLU RAY $99.00 in my head
CHRISTMAS IN JULYYYYYYY
PANASONIC BLUE RAY!
$99
DAYASHI HHHHHHHH... GREGGGGGGGGGGGG!
FEAR OF BETTER OPTIONS-
You do this whole wind-up about how hhgregg isn't very well known in most places, and then:
"Let me tell you about this store,
It's a lot like Best Buy."
[moves on]
incredible comedy
The problem was that they were selling all of their Panasonic Blurays for $99.
I see we follow the same religion.
Its funny you mention hhgregg trying to replace Circuit City in locations where they failed. Thats literally what happened at the location near where I lived in high school before that hhgregg also closed a few years later.
CHEEJOEKAY Not just Circuit City, but CompUSA, Tweeter, and HiFi Buys collapsed. HHGregg thought they could survive?
Those Christmas in July sales were just too good
I remember looking at an HHGreg that opened at the same place Circuit City closed before and thinking... "So Circuit City failed at this location but you will do fine?"
Mr Merhtin same thing as by me in Pittsburgh
Lol
Lol same here, in Florida
Love your videos brother! Keep up the good work!
That more than half of their sales came from appliances was interesting to me. That suggests half of the business was Amazon/Best Buy competition as you went into, but the other half was actually competing more with Home Depot and Lowe's. As someone who did a lot of remodeling over the past couple of years, there would have been zero chance I'd get everything taken care of at Home Depot or Lowe's, then go to hhgregg and spend time hagging with a salesperon on commission to maybe save a few dollars on the appliances.
Someone get this guy 1 million subs ASAP
Yep I can confirm as a Canadian moved here just recently I've never heard of these guys. But then again I never heard of Whattaburger either but they're delicious. Is hhgregg delicious? I don't think so, terrible name for a burger joint :P
Take 10 Whataburger is basically South-only
Fuck I'm American I didn't know they exist but it maybe because we have in and out instead
videogamebomer+ In And Out is pretty good too, a good replacement for Whataburger
Whataburger is primarily in Texas. I never heard of it until we moved here 8 years ago. It’s good but not the best. And I’ve never heard of hhgregg but I can safely say Whataburger is much more delicious than them lol.
Whataburger tastes horrible
I find it interesting that there exists multiple, competing stores for stationary & copies of papers (Staples, Office Depot, etc) but only one major big store for electronics. Best Buy lives while Circuit City, hhgregg & Radioshack fade from memory...
I grew up less than two miles away from a Micro Center - some of my friends even worked their while we were in high school. Never knew how lucky I was until I moved away from home and developed an interest in conputers.
Do one on Six Flags. Also, I live near a former hhgregg and they were downscaling store sizes by 2011.
I agree. The six Flags location that was the closest one to me was Six Flags: Kentucky Kingdom closed down. The story was that back in 2010 they forgot to pay for renting/using the land space so shortly after that it closed. But then in 2012 someone bought the old park and started on re-modeling. Then in 2014 it Re-opened as Kentucky Kingdom without the Six Flags ownership.
That and Six Flags' finical standing is still not ideal despite being out of bankruptcy for 7 years now.
Ghawk zjjsjsjz
There was a hhgregg here about a year or 2 ago, it closed a few months after Best Buy built a location about 1/2 a mile away
I hadn’t heard of hhgregg until they opened in my city in 2009. They opened in the same building that was a Circuit City, which had closed earlier in 2009 after about 15 years in operation. The building now houses a Burlington Coat Factory.
Not going to lie, when I first saw the name I thought the store had to do something with eggs.
... I don't know.
🤣🤣🤣
hhegg
1:03 it's a lot like Best Buy...Okay now you know
hhgregg: Same overpriced electronics like best buy, but better customer service.
hhgregg and circuit city pretty much remind me of Fry's Electronics with their style. Fry's is next to fall under after having worked for them for almost 2 years and seeing the business model fall to heavy negelction.
They had just opened a location here (bumfuck nowhere) couple years back when I moved into town. They had the balls to open literally right behind Best Buy. I paid them a visit..., but their inventory was just hilariously and woefully ill thought out. I went in for a router. They sold some cheap shitty routers that could be beat by any ISP provided router. Also, they did not stock ethernet cables at this location.
No idea what the hell they were thinking.
probably some computer illiterate executive who thought no one would want ethernet cables in 201X because wifi.
When I saw the title/company name, I thought the episode was going to be a joke, then I remembered it wasn't April 1st. Did a cat walk on their typewriter, and they just kept it because it looked similar to the name of the founder, but all one word and lower case?
I read the title phonetically at first too, and was quite confused. I live on the east coast and have never heard of this place!
I remember going to my local hhgregg during Christmas in July. I wanted a Panasonic blu-ray player for $99, but they only had them for $199. What a rip-off! Then I got hit with a snowball, IN JULY!!!
hhgregg? There might be one near me; I think? Driving by it is like seeing it in the background of a dream. It took this video to confirm that what I saw was real.
Wauser lol
Wauser That's a fantastic way to describe that.
Wauser You hit the nail on the head.
"So for all of the non-US residents, its a lot like Best Buy. " -quote
Thats not helping.
uh... For UK residents it's kind of similar to Currys/PC World I guess? I wouldn't know, this is the first time I've ever heard of this company.
Roy Van Lierop ikr
Indonesian resident here. There is no best buy here.
I'm guessing it is a Harvey Norman with a touch of Kmart.
For europe its similar to MediaMarkt/MediaWorld
hhgregg will always mean "99 dollars Panasonic Blu ray" to me
One key issue that killed hhgregg was the combination of high-pressure commission based salespeople and horrible customer service. The consumer simply stopped shopping there as they were totally fed up with the place. I am in Indiana where we've had a store here for decades and I stopped shopping there loooong ago. You can only keep a ghost town of a store open so long, relying on victims for customers, and keep the lights on. I do not miss them, and since the dishonest sales people were much of the problem, I didn't feel sorry for them when they closed.
Alan Maier yeap and prices
I hate commission based sales places. I don't want to be chit chatted to by strangers. If i, rarely, really need to know something, ill come find you. Otherwise, let me be while I browse!
I sell appliances and don’t make commission. I’d rather customers go somewhere else if they want a grand tour and in-depth analysis about the appliances. Try google people, it’s not that hard to do your own research first. Surprisingly there are still customers who shop this way.
Your and idiot. First of all I worked at hhgregg part time. The company tells you to be aggressive and yes I agreed that was their downfall but their were really hard working people who were looking to feed their families. I don't blame the workers I blame the company. When you walk into the store there is an employee assigned to you right away next man up and you are told to do anything to make the sale. To say that you don't feel sorry for people who lost their jobs because of the idiots that are running the company is heartless. If you were only paid on commission you would be doing everything to make money. I seen people who had to go on welfare because of this and that hurts all of us. These big companies don't care about the employees or the hard workers they hurt. I feel sorry for every employee that was not making decisions for the company. Did you know that the CEO of the company jumped shipp 6 months before it closes because they put this company in the ground, if that's not a scumbag I don't know what is. I had another job so when it went under it didn't hurt me because I was doing for extra money but most people couldn't find other jobs because up until 30 days before they closed they lied to their employees and told them everything was fine and they weren't closing. My point is don't blame the employees blame the company. My heart goes out to everyone who lost their jobs.
Unlike a lot of commenters, I saw the title and knew the company. I didn’t know it went bankrupt or was closed. I did now realize I haven’t seen a commercial in a couple months though. Usually the news talks about it but I guess they didn’t even care...
"I ran the numbers and found out thats not even half the states" thanks for clearing that up lmao
hhgregg is like that feeling you get when you go into a lucid dream. UNSTOPPABLE.
think about it, the ceo probably just said "EXPAND. YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE YOU. BUILD THERE. YOU. BUILD THERE"
what happened? answer: they started selling furniture! i went in looking for electronic stuff and they tried selling me a couch. what? furniture & mattresses is being sold on almost every corner around me. they were entering an already saturated market but didnt do the weekly "best most amazing once in a lifetime get it while it lasts too good to miss" sales like the other guys in town are doing.
Oddly enough, I think that they really should have pushed the furniture aspect. It was something that really differentiated them from Best Buy. I never even knew them as an 'electronics shop', but as a mid range place to get furniture and appliances.
My current washer and dryer are from hhgregg. The purchase, negotiation, delivery and install experience were amazing. I am very happy with it. I was excited to see a new player in the market and happy to have purchased something from them. I still have my set and they still run great. Oh, I also have a really awesome entertainment center that I bought from them during the going out of business sale.
*$99 PANASONIC BLU-RAY!*
Fraser Currie CHRISTMAS IN JUUUUULYYY!
42 INCH HD TV $489
42-INCH LED TV $299
EVERYTHINGS ON SALE DURING CHRISTMAS IN JULY