I’ll Take Mine Black
Something’s happening in our great country. Jobs are being lost; businesses are closing or cutting back. Huge companies that seemingly could never fail announce layoffs, shutdowns or bankruptcy. Just a short time ago it seemed as if you barely put a house for sale sign in the yard and two bids would come at you to buy. Cups of coffee were dressed up with creams and exotic flavors and sold for $ 8.00 bucks. Companies were reporting record sales every quarter; start up businesses had a relatively easy time of getting up and going. Consumers consumed and life was good. Take a look at how things have changed.
Circuit city-gone
Levitz ( est.1910) – gone
Ann Taylor closing 117 stores
Fashion Bug, Lane Bryant and Catherine’s closing 150 stores
Eddie Bauer closing 27 stores
Cache-gone
J Jill and Pacific Sunwear-gone
Gap closing 85 stores
Footlocker closing 140 stores (more in Jan)
Wickes Furniture-gone
Zales closing 82 stores
Whitehall-gone
Piercing Pagoda-gone
Disney closing 98 stores ( more to come )
Home Depot closing 15 stores
Sharper Image-gone
Sprint/Nextel closing 133 stores
Pep Boys closing 33 stores
Macys closing 9 stores
KB Toys closing 356 stores
Starbucks 600 and counting
This is only a partial list of course and I didn’t even want to attempt to list the problems with the Aig’s , Freddie Macs and car companies of the world etc. etc. It’s too easy to list them anyway and then assign the blame to greedy CEO’s with their corporate jets and golden parachutes. No I am shocked and dismayed by the names on the list that I grew up with. It’s inconceivable to me that they’ve sunk so low.
There is however a silver lining. There’s a company that is growing by leaps and bounds. This outfit is taking in cash hand over fist and shows no ill effect from the economy. While Levitz obviously couldn’t keep up and Macys, give me a break, they wouldn’t know how to handle a business if you shouted out the formula and had a ‘PARADE’. No this little beauty I’m talking about has got a niche you won’t believe. They really don’t produce anything, they have no products but man are they fierce with the competition. You can’t beat their prices and they have no advertising costs. Shoot they even have their overhead paid for by other companies and the people who work for them. About the only downside I see is that they are not listed on the stock exchange. Oh they’re in it knee deep and have several ‘seats on the floor’ which is usually reserved for the big boys who actually are listed. Maybe someday they let some of us in. We might all be able to ‘share’ some of this prosperity but this company is a little funny about that. It’s a very lock tight organization that doesn’t allow for outsiders to get too much. If they did then some would move up in the company and possibly threaten the top CEO’S and then of course the ones stuck at the bottom would be left out.
This company wasn’t always this big though. They did at one time have to plan and struggle while budgeting and watching costs. For awhile they even gave modest breaks to the other companies and let the competition take care of itself. Back in 2001 and 2003 they even increased those breaks and boy the other companies took off. Everybody was doing so well and even this little niche business set sail with record increases. Those were some good times, I guess though since business is so cut throat they couldn’t let it go on forever.
So for now if you work at Pep Boys or the Piercing Pagoda it might get a little rough. But cheer up maybe you can get in to this great gig, who knows. Why don’t we meet at Starbucks later for some coffee and talk about it. I don’t have $8.00 bucks right now so I’ll just have to take mine black.
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