Blue vs Red. The decor of Circuit City stores is most responsible for its bankruptcy. Best Buy has a cool demeanor, blue, cool, and fresh. Circuit City’s colors were red. Red means stop, turn around and leave the store. Red is a halting color to the American psyche. Red is used as a stopping signal, warning signal, danger signaling. Having the color Red as a main color in a shopping environment is a risk. Target stores should learn from this or they’ll be filing the next bankruptcy.
Examples of decor in stores:
Walmart: Blue, Fresh, Lots of lights | Successful
Bestbuy: Blue, Fresh, Lots of lights | Successful
Circuit City: Red, Gloomy, Red, Somber | Bankruptcy
Cons Electronic: Gloomy, Somber | Approaching Bankruptcy
Usually CC (Circuit City) is only an option when BB (Best Buy) did not have the product immediately available. Walking into CC was like entering a morgue, it was uncharacteristically gloomy and somber for a shopping environment. They were already feeling the pinch of the economy and were cutting down on lights and it was evident.
Although CC plans to stay in business while it reorganizes itself under chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings, nonetheless, the news of their current state of affairs will expedite the end of the company.
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tim quigley 11.10.08 at 3:30 pm
There is a CC store in San Mateo, California that would provide the perfect case in point. The lighting was awful, they always had Mexican football on all the television monitors playing in Spanish, gangsta rap was always booming out of the sound systems, the displays were usually half complete if not revealing bare shelves, and in the event you could ever get staff to help you find something, you would first have to educate them at length to what it is you’re looking for (this happened for on multiple visits). The underscoring of how cluelessly this particular CC was run was in the home theater room - the place looked like they hired day workers from in front of Home Depot to do the interior design, complete with a beat-up and stained loveseat with the edges worn out and revealing the fill underneath and a cheap, tattered cotton blanked draped over the back of it. It looked like they had found it on the side of the road. I hoped to take a picture of it on my next visit for my amusement, but then they had just closed that room and left it empty except for a few cables and boxes on the floor.
Suffice it to say, I only ever would go there as a last resort. I don’t condemn the place, it was just managed badly. In all honesty, I will truly miss having an electronics superstore within two miles from home that I could go to for a quick purchase so as never needing to go to a Radio Shack.