Ultimate Electronics closing all stores

[retailisking]

It's all over for the 46-store chain that just opened a bunch of new stores last year, many of them in former Circuit City locations.  They filed Chapter 11 last month, and then, as with Wards, GE Capital pulled the plug, forcing a liquidation.

http://www.denverpost.com/search/ci_17216957
http://www.twice.com/article/463575-Ultimate_Electronics_To_Shut_Down.php
http://www.ultimateelectronics.com/

[videogamer75]

Wow. That was fast.

[retailisking]

Ultimate Electronics had a number of problems.  Expanding well outside its core markets in the West was one.  Another was a lack of differentiation versus Circuit City.  I doubt they would have thrived even in the best of times, but the last holiday season was lackluster for consumer electronics even at Best Buy, the 800-pound CE gorilla.  And as I noted in the first post in this thread, GE Capital is ruthless about cutting its losses.

[NJxxJon]

Their site looks managed by a 3 year old.....just SAYING!    ::)

[retailisking]

Their site looks managed by a 3 year old.....just SAYING!    ::)

In fairness to UE, that's their GOOB site, but even in the best of times it was less than state of the art.  They only had 46 stores at their peak, so they probably didn't have the resources to come up with something that would have been competitive with Best Buy on the e-commerce side of things.  I was struck by the lack of competitiveness in their sales flyers.

[ameskmart1]

We used to have Ultimate Electronics here in Idaho until their first bankruptcy in 2005. This doesn't surprise me because when Ulitmate was still open in Boise: Circuit City and Best Buy were packed with cars, Ulitmate was not. I've noticed some stores are still vacant from their first bankruptcy.