Lenny, now that we know that Curtis Mathes is having a very difficult time just to start-up a few handful of stores, what a disaster it would have been to a 500 plus location retailer in getting all of their stores stocked and trained. Circuit City operates 457 Superstores, four consumer electronics-only stores, 50 mall- based Circuit City Express stores. They (Circuit City) would not be able to advertise the uniView for many years in there national advertisements. Not until the product was available at all stores. At 2 stores per week, it would take a chain like Circut City five years to completely be stock in all stores by Curtis Mathes. By then, maybe the product has run it course. Now imagine Curtis Mathes trying to setup 5 national chains, 12 regional chains, 800 number sales, Infomercials, Multi-marketing programs and Web site sales, and you can easily see NOW why Curtis Mathes can not handle this load. The investors can not wait 30-50 years for the training and stocking and manufacturing of the uniViews at this level of expansion.
Perhaps there might also be another reason for not going with the national chains right now. With the clout that these large chains have, they may have a policy that any company that wants to deal with them, must provide the financing for their products. Months ago, Neal said there would be no financing offered to the retailers, but it was basically a cash purchase with the products, and not billed on credit. |
