A bluefish blitz — right here in Roanoke
Have you ever seen a good bluefish blitz? The kind where a school of big chompers just attacks a school of prey? It’s unreal.
I felt like I was in the middle of a blitz on Sunday when, after getting some project supplies at Home Depot, I swung into the soon-to-close Sportsman’s Warehouse.
The place was an absolute zoo, with lines at that registers that stretched back toward the middle of the store.
Now, I could understand a buying blitz if everything in the store was 50 percent off. But most of what I saw was discounted 10 percent, although fishing terminal tackle was 20 percent off. The best I saw was 30 percent off hunting clothes, some of which already had previous discounts.
Now, 10 percent is better than nothing, 20 percent is getting somewhere and 30 percent is good. But the 10- and 20 percent discounts have been common at the store. All you had to do was get your hands on the discount cards SW handed out like candy at outdoors events and meetings.
The only thing I can figure is that everybody showed up looking for killer deals. When they saw the huge crowds they figured they better get in on the action, even without killer deals, for fear the items they were after would quickly sell out.
“I’ve had my eye on this tin of pellets for a while but I just couldn’t do it when they were $3.99. But now that they’re $3.60, I’m all over it! Yeah, man! I saved 40 cents! Now I excuse me while I go spend the next half hour in line.”
Strange.
March 18, 2009 - 11:17 AM
Mark,
I stopped by there on my lunch break today, I didn’t think the crowd was to bad at 1:15. My neighbor had told me that they were already marking stuff down so I thought it was worth checking out. I am in the market for a pop up blind but they have not marked those down yet. I ran into my boss while I was there and he was not impressed, he wanted to know where the sale was. I imagine next week things will be marked down a little more. Gives me an excuse to go on that side of town. My neighbor also told me that he heard Gander Mountain was heading the same direction, any truth to that?
-- I was over there, too, this afternoon. Much more sane than over the weekend. This liquidation will be like Circuit City’s, with markdowns gradually increasing over time. I don’t want to be there on the first day after the next set of markdowns.
As for Gander Mountain, I’ve heard nothing substantive of the sort. I expect their business will suffer over the next couple of months as people jam SW looking for deals. But I would think their corporate staff would understand that once SW is closed the Roanoke location of GM will be on stronger footing than it has been since it opened. But this current environment is a challenge for just about everybody, so nothing would shock me. mt