Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Not For Sale

The other day I visited a Hastings Entertainment store, which was closing as a part of the chain's bankruptcy. It wasn't able to find enough of a niche in the world of e-books and Amazon online sales to continue. That's an unfortunate reality of the free market, but the market remains the best way to measure what people want. So maybe the blame lies elsewhere.

A family was shopping, and one of the children, a girl of about eight or nine, had been given one of the books she would be getting with the family purchase. She dropped to the floor in a cross-legged second and dove in, immediately engrossed in whatever story she held while the others browsed.

Jeff Bezos will never be able to sell that, no matter what technology comes under his company's command. 
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2 comments:

  1. fillyjonkJuly 27, 2016 at 9:15 PM

    the local news has been full of people complaining about how "this store sells what no other store did, why is it going away?" I don't know if there's some other issue involved (some chains that went bust did because of bad management in the upper levels) or if the people who thought it was so great didn't shop there enough.

    I admit: I always felt they devoted a bit too much to the "and entertainment" side of things for my taste. We still have a Books a Million (for as long as THAT chain lasts....)

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  2. FriarJuly 29, 2016 at 12:58 PM

    And I have to admit that I would not have thought they would still be one of the ones standing...

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