Wow. East coast around New York many years ago was Crazy Eddie’s and their smaller rival, Druckers. You can read up on Crazy with a web search, great great story. I have a 100 stories, but just one. We’d sell technics and pioneer turntables at cost - really - at cost! But we’d sell the cartridge separate at 500 to 1,000 percent mark-up. Yes, we’d pay $9.00 for a private label Shure, Pickering, Audio-technica and sell them for $59-$129 each. We made more money doing it that way by undercutting Circuit City and other stores on the turntable, but huge makeup on the cartridge. This was around the time when receivers were going though the power competition who had more watts and lowest THD. Nothing else mattered to most folks. Good old days. I’ll post speaker stories if folks want to hear.
"Chain Store" stories.....
If you have worked in or been a customer of Hi-Fi/Stereo stores, esp. in the Midwest, you may
remember some of the chains that existed at one time.
In my city we had a "mall" store named "Team Electronics". I worked at a competing independent store selling some of the best. Two things I remember best about that "Team" store are.
1. When demo’ing any speaker, one of the salesman would say: "like bass", then he would crank up the bass control....and other times he would use...."like treble"...with the same action following.
2. When the manager of this chain store would "visit" our store....."just to say Hi" what he was really saying was...
"damn, we’re dying, are you dying"?
I was lucky, the independent store I was at had some of the early best, Advent, Dahlquist, Magnepan, Yamaha,..and more...so it was not hard to make sales. It was amazing how many more expensive speakers the Advents would best.
Please add any of your "favorite" audio store stories.
remember some of the chains that existed at one time.
In my city we had a "mall" store named "Team Electronics". I worked at a competing independent store selling some of the best. Two things I remember best about that "Team" store are.
1. When demo’ing any speaker, one of the salesman would say: "like bass", then he would crank up the bass control....and other times he would use...."like treble"...with the same action following.
2. When the manager of this chain store would "visit" our store....."just to say Hi" what he was really saying was...
"damn, we’re dying, are you dying"?
I was lucky, the independent store I was at had some of the early best, Advent, Dahlquist, Magnepan, Yamaha,..and more...so it was not hard to make sales. It was amazing how many more expensive speakers the Advents would best.
Please add any of your "favorite" audio store stories.