" in some instances demanding up-front payments from retailers before the goods are even shipped"

Those pesky wholesalers, demanding that someone pay for something before they'll send it out. I just can't imagine how the retailers will survive now that they're going to have to have made some profit before they can buy something else to sell...

I wonder if we can reverse the whole situation : local supermarkets let me take as much shopping as I like and then I only have to pay for it when I use it.

Or, Christmas presents that I give out now and only have to pay for when the bill comes in, after the 25th December.

That would solve the credit crunch!

This lets them keep all of the gear that they currently have and maybe not have to pay their vendors. Suckers. No wonder their suppliers started getting nervous. Rumor had it that a month or two ago one company (Sony?) had trucks en route to Circuit City stores and called them back home since they had no idea if they would get paid.

Hope that Circuit Sh1177y will have enough inventory to last them through the holidays. The stores by me (that just closed last week) looked empty - half the store was just carpet no racks no nothing, and that was probably a year ago.

Circuit city was good to me: I bought an LCD TV at Fry's, then saw a circuit city ad for the same item at a much lower price. Fry's called up CC while I stood there and CC gave an even lower price over the phone, which Fry's met. When all was said and done, CC saved me about $500 and I didn't even buy anything from them.

Schadenfreude/irony aside, the real lesson is that competition, even from crappy companies, is a still good thing for the consumer.

...how many companies are secretly happy about the credit crunch? After all, it now gives them an excuse to downsize/fire people/close stores and not look like a bunch of profit-chasing bastards.

How is crappy city still around.

That seems standard for the liquidator they use, jack up the price then give you a discount. If your lucky you can get it for regular price.

So another Good To Great company, as defined by Jim Collins in his book, bites the dust, alongside the recent demise of Fanny Mae as an independent company. Not a surprise really - the good to great execution strategies work only in stable industries in stable economic conditions. They say nothing about strategy or risk.