“Blaine? His name is Blaine?! That’s not a name–that’s a major appliance!”
As many of you already know, Game Crazy recently announced it was closing 200 of its retail stores. I had an opportunity to stop into the Golden Valley store and interview the manager, Ryan McMillan (also a lead guitarist for the local band ‘The Alarmists’). According to Ryan, they are calling the move “Going Dark.” He has been told that there will be some stores reopening as stand-alone shops in within the next year.
I was kind of surprised that they slashed 200 of their retail stores nation wide as I understood that Game Crazy was the more profitable side of the Hollywood Video chain. Hollywood Video has been ailing for sometime and tossing around the idea of closing some of their Movie Gallery and Game Crazy stores for awhile. According to Ryan, the Golden Valley store has always been profitable–but apparently not profitable enough.
The largest store in Blaine and a smaller but highly profitable store in Cottage Grove will remain open. All other Game Crazy stores in MN will be closed for good* in 3 weeks. All new inventory was shipped back to corporate but all used inventory is now 50% of the regular sticker price with prices expected to drop drastically from week to week.
(if you can't use cheesy pshop effects on GCycle, where can you?)
