Store Closing Sale! Everything Must Go! Nothing Held Back!

With the retail apocalypse raging on with obviously no end in sight, brick and mortar retailers everywhere are holding "Going Out of Business Total Liquidation Sales", where a store sells off what's left of its inventory at (supposed) discounts, to entice shoppers to get there and buy up the remaining merchandise before the store closes for good.

Have you ever been to a liquidation sale of any retail store, either locally-owned, regional, or a major national chain?

A couple of months ago, my mom and I shopped at the Fairway Discount Store during its liquidation (which the store owner blamed on national chains such as Family Dollar and Dollar General coming in and taking away market share). It was bittersweet knowing that my mom and I could find certain things there that couldn't be easily found anywhere else, plus greeting cards were always discounted off of their marked prices there.

With so many Kmarts having to close, my mom and I are still waiting for the closest Kmart near us (Vienna Township/Clio) to be announced for liquidation, perhaps in the next round of closure announcements (which could be as soon as the week between Christmas and New Year's, based on speculation posted on TheLayoff).

Back in early 2009, I was tempted to drive all the way out to Circuit City during their going out of business sale, thinking that I would snag some great deals on computer stuff. In hindsight, though, I'm actually glad I missed their GOB sale (which was a result of their Chapter 7 bankruptcy case), since I would eventually read multiple horror stories about customers who bought damaged merchandise, including destroyed video game discs and shattered TVs, from Circuit City's liquidators*.

*Typically, when a major retail store goes out of business, its inventory, including fixtures, is sold to a liquidation company for pennies on the dollar, and they take it from there. Once that happens, (insert retailer name here) is out of the picture, and the liquidator hires any remaining employees they need to complete the liquidation, putting them on their payroll. Everything that goes on in a soon-to-close store is under the control of the liquidator. This is why Circuit City's GOB sale was so controversial: Customers were actually NOT dealing with Circuit City, but the liquidation companies assigned to handle the liquidation of all the chain's stores.

Damn do I miss going to Circuit City in the mid 2000s

Yeah I remember going to a few Circuit City stores when they were doing their GOB deals, and I did see hiring ads for hiring staff for that. There were many folks trying to get various electronics there.

I think the other closing businesses we went to were Montgomery Ward for a TV and TV stand, CompUSA, and KMart.

I used to be a supervisor at our local Kmart and we went through liquidation and it was the worst experience ever. While it is a great way to shop for customers, it is absolutely hell on employees. We would have hundreds of "go backs" every day because customers would not be pleased with the discount price(people literally expect 90% discounts on day one).

Liquidation lasted around 3 months and I was so glad when it ended.

Sears is liquidating all their stores in Canada and I've been to one just out of curiosity while I was at the mall, but since I wasn't waiting for the sales or anything and went pretty late, everything was picked clean already and only the L's through XXXL's were left. I did get some cheap bras though since that area wasn't raided as thoroughly, which is nice.

Incineroar said:

I visited the Sears here shortly after they announced the liquidation and it wasn't really that much more busy. Fast forward a month and I went in looking for some fixtures to hang some clothes on, and the store was nearly freaking empty. I actually had to take a minute because I always remembered that store being much more full whenever I went in but to see it so empty was genuinely shocking to me.

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Yeah, that was exactly what it was like when I went! It was basically a ghost town, but everything was gone and all the remaining stock were just kind of lumped together. I don't know what the deal was, and maybe it was just this one particular Sears but the lights were really dim too, so the overall atmosphere was just kind of sad and creepy, lol.

At least we'll always have The Bay. 😋

I did go to my local Blockbusters Liquidation sale when Blockbusters went out of business.

I did drive by the local KMart that is closing and there were TONS of cars in the parking lot. Just kept right on driving.

Radioshack went through something like that a while back, and ironically it was during a time when I was trying to learn Electronics, so I ended up getting tons of goodies. :D

Kikaito plush said:

I did go to my local Blockbusters Liquidation sale when Blockbusters went out of business.

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Same, except i dont remember it well because it was a while ago lol

Blockbuster used to be so awesome

I went to K-Mart before they closed down in my city. Didn't find much as everything went so fast sadly. I also went to Circuit City before they closed down as well, but that was years ago so I used my parents money :P

I went to a going out of business sale for one of our city's most well known and loved bookstores. The locals in my neighborhood were all so upset to see it go. The sales were dope but it was also the most depressing shopping experience ever since I used to go to that store a ton during my childhood and seeing it closing down was sad.

Choice Specs said:

I used to be a supervisor at our local Kmart and we went through liquidation and it was the worst experience ever. While it is a great way to shop for customers, it is absolutely hell on employees. We would have hundreds of "go backs" every day because customers would not be pleased with the discount price(people literally expect 90% discounts on day one).

Liquidation lasted around 3 months and I was so glad when it ended.

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Typically, when a liquidator takes over a store for the purpose of closing it down, prices on the merchandise will revert to MSRP (removing discounts that the now-departed retailer applied before the closing announcement-this reversion is one reason why Kmart liquidation ads will say in their fine print "This store is not participating in current Kmart circulars."), and then the liquidator will apply a small initial discount (typically 10%-20% off "original price") from there, with the "discounts" growing incrementally the longer the liquidation process goes on.
The main purpose of course, is to net as much profit as they can not only to cover the liquidator's own costs (including payroll), but to recoup money for the liquidating retail company to pay down their own outstanding bills/debt (especially if ordered by bankruptcy court, as in the case of Circuit City, Mervyns, and Sports Authority, as well as others that have had Chapter 11 cases converted to Chapter 7; either voluntarily by the retail company, or involuntarily by creditors).

I dunno but i geuss it means 2015 must have had a lot of bad shop events

heh yeah i have a tendncy to post silly things on serious threads.

i guess that means im the official forum jokester eh

ok yeah guys just ignore this lame comment nothing interesting here.

really