"Abandoned!" Series: Ames

[Chuck E. Cheese]

Bright Sun Films from YouTube does a series called "Abandoned!" Which documents the history of businesses that have went out of business.

They made a video about Ames recently: https://www.youtube.com/shared?ci=INRyX62w7wg

It uses a lot of multimedia from the site and gives a special thanks at the end. I wish I could have gotten the same for My Blockbuster Site, but eh.

Check it out!

[TheFugitive]

Very interesting!

It starts off with a vintage Kmart commercial featuring an actor named Terry McGovern.
He went to college with my mom.

The footage of that abandoned Ames in Baltimore is too creepy.  I notice it had the red
color scheme that Ames was using when I worked for them, and not the green one they
were using when they closed.  Either the store never got remodeled for some reason, or
it has been abandoned for over twenty years.

Glossed over in the narration is the fact that the 9/11 terrorist attacks happened
about a month after Ames filed the second Chapter 11.  This significantly slowed the
national economy, and resulted in a poor Christmas selling season.  In the end this
is what put Ames in a tailspin from which they could not recover.

Also interesting is the fact that after each failed expansion, bankruptcy and retreat,
the Ames store count always settled at just a bit above 300.  In retrospect they probably
would have remained a much healthier company if they had focused on operating 300
stores efficiently and properly, and not tried to become a national retailer.