9/10/2021   Ripoff real estate results in blighted neighborhoods, by Louis Rossman

9/6/2021   New York Times FINALLY discusses the death of downtown NYC; but won't explain WHY, by Louis Rossman

8/20/2021   Madison Ave is 39% empty; Manhattan landlords, can you lower the prices now? by Louis Rossman 

 

7/9/2021   1st ave walkthrough: East Village, NYC is becoming a dead mall, by Louis Rossman

 

7/7/2021   Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities are destroying NYC, by Louis Rossman

 

7/4/2021   NYC: A documentary of urban decay, by Louis Rossman

 

6/25/2021    64-year-old Michigan mall to be demolished, replaced with e-commerce warehousing, by Justine Lofton, MLive

Eastland Center in Harper Woods, one of the oldest malls in the Detroit area will soon be gone because “the majority” shops online at places like Amazon, a local official said.  Warehouse and industrial space aimed at supporting e-commerce will replace it.

 

“The majority of you all shop at Amazon,” Mayor Valerie Kindle said at a news conference. “That’s one of the reasons that the demise of malls has happened.”

 5/13/2021   Amazon Unbound, Jeff Bezos and the Invention of a Global Empire, Brad Stone's Bio reviewed by Ben Smith, The New York Times

At Amazon, nearly every big decision comes down to a meeting with Bezos, at which his deputies hold their breaths, genuinely uncertain of whether he will berate them and tear up their proposals, or double their planned budgets. Some of his fixations, like his determination to create a smart speaker, are visionary. Others are quirky: After reading that a single hamburger can contain meat from a hundred different cows, he decided that Amazon’s fledgling grocery business would distinguish itself by offering a “single-cow burger.” Once his aides got past thinking their boss was joking, they set to work. A few months later, the product manager got another email from Bezos: He was having trouble opening the packaging, and the burger had dripped too much fat onto his grill.

 

4/18/2021   NYC is Not Dead: Welcome to Alphabet City,, by Tomas Delgado

3/26/2021   AOC and Elizabeth Warren skillfully tear Amazon apart for its terrible tweets, by Rachel Kraus

RE the whole pee bottle thing, Amazon got ratioed real hard by people tweeting responses with images, documents, and news reports of — what else — pee  bottles. Some Amazon factory workers and delivery drivers say they have to resort to peeing in bottles because Amazon's productivity requirements don't give them enough time to go to the bathroom.

Retail Electronics Icon Slams Doors Shut 

2/23/2021   Fry’s Electronics permanently closing all stores nationwide, KRON4 San Francisco

The company has changed its website so that it now just shows a goodbye message.

 

The message says in part,

 

“After nearly 36 years in business as the one-stop-shop and online resource for high-tech professionals across nine states and 31 stores, Fry’s Electronics, Inc. (“Fry’s” or “Company”), has made the difficult decision to shut down its operations and close its business permanently as a result of changes in the retail industry and the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The Company will implement the shut down through an orderly wind down process that it believes will be in the best interests of the Company, its creditors, and other stakeholders.

 

The Company ceased regular operations and began the wind-down process on February 24, 2021. It is hoped that undertaking the wind-down through this orderly process will reduce costs, avoid additional liabilities, minimize the impact on our customers, vendors, landlords and associates, and maximize the value of the Company’s assets for its creditors and other stakeholders.”

 

FRY’S ELECTRONICS

2/23/2021   Fry’s Electronics is shutting its doors for good, by Sean Hollister, The Verge

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the family-owned business had been pushed to the brink of extinction by online retailers like Amazon, Newegg and more. Initially, the company started a campaign to price-match any item you could find online. It added a children’s toy aisle, huge racks of As Seen on TV gadgets, even perfume. But things got worse. By 2019, what used to be a paradise of gadgets, computers, components, video games, audio equipment and appliances had turned into ghost warehouses filled with empty shelves.

2/23/2021   Report: Fry’s Electronics going out of business, shutting down all stores, by SAM MACHKOVECH, Ars Technica

Founded in Sunnyvale in 1985, the former king of build-your-own-PC retailers couldn't survive COVID, consignment shift.

For years, Fry's Electronics was the United States' largest physical retailer dedicated to just about every computing and electronic device you could think of, particularly individual computer components. As the chain expanded to more stores throughout the US, particularly in taking over multiple defunct Incredible Universe locations, Fry's rode the build-your-own boom of personal computing. If you built your own PC in the past two decades and lived within driving distance of a Fry's, that store was likely where you began looking for motherboards, optical disc drives, RAM of all speeds and slots, and spindles of no less than 200 CD-Rs.


1/24/2020   Rumors about Fry's Electronics sent us on a wild journey to find the truth, Bitwit, YouTube 

 

9/10/2019   Frys Electronics, Fremont | Retail Mix USA, YouTube

[I visited this location at about the time this video was shot.  Dismal? Yes.] 

 

9/9/2019   Fry’s Electronics- Sunnyvale CA, Retail Mix USA, YouTube

The year was 1985. Frys was founded here, in the very hearth of Silicone Valley, Sunnyvale, California, by Kathy Kolder and John, Randy, and Dave Fry.

  

8/16/2019   Fry's Electronics: Will They Be Gone Soon? (NOW PERMANENTLY CLOSED) | Retail Archaeology, YouTube

 

8/8/2019   IS FRYS ELECTRONCS CLOSING FOR GOOD?  | Videobob Moseley, YouTube

 

1/12/2019   Fry's Electronics & Incredible Universe: What Happened? (OUT OF BUSINESS) | Retail Archaeology, YouTube

 

 

 

2/3/2021   Jeff Bezos Swallowed Our Economy Whole, by Steve LeVine, Marker

Perhaps no one except Bezos himself could see what could be next after books — dominance in surveillance technologies like Alexa and Ring, cloud computing, every kind of retail, groceries, health, entertainment, and more.

 

That was all before Covid-19. Since then, Amazon has grown from a mere behemoth onto a new level requiring an entirely different vocabulary. With much of the country still in lockup, Amazon packages end up on the front porch of an unnerving percentage of American homes several times a week. In earnings reported at the same time as Bezos’ shift to executive chairman, Amazon announced a 40% year-on-year surge in fourth-quarter sales, to $125 billion, the first time quarterly company revenue has surpassed $100 billion. Amazon expects the current quarter to exceed $100 billion, too. That is the scale of ExxonMobil of yore. And ExxonMobil used to operate as a virtual country to itself.

 

TweetReAmazon Strongarming 2020 12 23

 

 

12/23/2020   'Amazon’s Problem: It’s a Giant Acting Like a Startup.' How Amazon Wins: By Steamrolling Rivals and Partners, by Dana Mattioli, Wall Street Journal

CEO Jeff Bezos still runs the e-commerce giant with the drive of a startup trying to survive, and that strand of its corporate DNA is becoming a liability

 

Several Amazon sellers said they have received notifications from Amazon, which has been battling fraud and fake goods on its platform, that say their products are used or counterfeit. Amazon suspends their selling accounts until they can prove that the products are legitimate, which can cause big sellers to lose tens of thousands of dollars each day, they said.

 

To turn their accounts back on, Amazon often requests that the sellers provide details on who manufactures their product along with invoices from the manufacturer so that Amazon can verify authenticity. Several sellers told the Journal they provided those details to Amazon to get their accounts reinstated, only for Amazon to introduce its own version of their products using the same manufacturer.

 

12/23/2020   Whitmer may veto lame duck bills giving major tax breaks to Meijer, by Paul Egan, Detroit Free Press

12/23/2020   Loves Furniture to close 9 more Michigan stores, by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press

The Loves Furniture brand and company arose out of a May deal in U.S. Bankruptcy Court that sold 17 former Art Van stores in Michigan to Texas-based US Assets Inc. plus 10 other Art Van and Levin and Wolf locations in other states. US Assets' founder and CEO is named Jeff Love.

12/9/2020   Amazon to build facility at former Huron Township horse track, by Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press

8/6/2020   The Inside Story of MacKenzie Scott, the Mysterious 60-Billion-Dollar Woman, by Stephanie Clifford, Marker/Medium

An Amazon backstory

7/21/2018   Attack of the clones: how Aldi gets away with mimicking big brands, by Michaela Whitbourn