Future Shop closing

[Spiderfish]

Futureshop understood the idea of having stuff in stock for customer to actually buy.

That has not been my experience with FutureShop. I would agree however that stock was marginally better in the past and gotten worse in recent years. Edited March 31, 2015 by Spiderfish

[WIP]

One of the few ways that you can positively affect your community is where you shop. We live in a small town in Southern Ontario. Many people from this area drive 100 to 200 km to shop for large items in Hamilton or Toronto where the "best" deals can be found and a "greater variety" of goods are available. We are not one of those people. We shop "local" for everything.

We recently renovated our kitchen and purchased a new fridge, stove, dish washer and various other smaller appliances. We purchased form a local businessman who dealt with a variety of choices. While purchasing in bulk did get us a bit of a discount I feel we could have saved at least 5% by going to Hamilton - but the local businessman supports a local kids hockey and baseball team, is a very active member of a local service club and a person with a reputation for dependability.

We hired a local contractor who purchases materials locally. We could have gotten a better deal from an out of town remodelling franchise. Our local contractor is a member of the local church, has a reputation for excellent work and I often run into him at the local Legion.

A couple of years ago, a Wal mart was built just out of town and a new mall was built. Our downtown core is begging to suffer with some old family owned businesses selling out. Local jobs have been lost.

I believe that when you purchase locally then your money stays in the community. It may cost you a little more but that money circulates through the community and comes back to benefit you.

I believe that purchasing locally is an investment in your community. Buying out of town, while maybe cheaper, is money gone.

I first heard of this phenomena they call "Walmarting" or "walmartization" from some of my Michigan relations several years ago, as they found their small, local stores were closing down as more and more people drove to the Walmart or Target stores, instead of shopping locally. Once one of the big box stores (usually Walmart) has bankrupted the competition with their low, low prices, those prices start going up, up, up afterwards, when they establish something close to a local retail monopoly!

My beef with Futureshop's business model is having a bunch of kids hanging around you trying to sell you home theaters or some other expensive crap they can make a modest commission at. Then when you just need accessories or something cheap behind one of those locked cabinets, you have to chase them down....I told one twit who ran off to answer questions from a prospect in the TV dept:"just give me the keys kid, and I'll go get it myself!" Then I ended up buying most electronics stuff online, like everyone else does these days. So, I'm not going to miss Futureshop, or Best Buy...never was a customer of theirs.