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How the heck does FYE manage to stay open?

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Amory

Amory

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So, as a rule, I've avoided shopping at FYE ever since I was old enough to realize how much of a ripoff it is. On every single item they sell.

Recently I was given a gift card for the place, so I decided to check it out to see what (if anything) had changed. Yeah, nothing's changed.

It actually gets me angry just to be in the store and see the prices. In this economy where all but the social elite are looking for a bargain, how does a store that charges $40 for most blu ray movies, $15-$18 for music CD's, and varied ridiculous, borderline comical prices for a random assortment of games ($34.99 for a used, 2006 sports game), manage to stay in business?

Cashiers then have the audacity to ask if you'd like their VIP card, which carries a monthly fee and offers a 10% discount, the deduction of which still leaves everything above retail price at just about any other retailer.

The obvious answer is to continue to not shop there. Which I certainly won't. But can anyone offer a valid reason why a store like Circuit City would go out of business while FYE continues to survive?

/rant
 
I have always wondered this also. I have come to the conclusion that it is a front for the mob like those mall piano stores usually are.
 
Hari Seldon said:
I have always wondered this also. I have come to the conclusion that it is a front for the mob like those mall piano stores usually are.
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I'll sign off on this. It boggles my mind that places like this are still open but places like Circuit City shut down and other places like Blockbuster are circling the drain. How can that be? There's a 100%+ markup on everything in the store. Everything.
 
BobLoblaw said:
I'll sign off on this. It boggles my mind that places like this are still open but places like Circuit City shut down and other places like Blockbuster are circling the drain. How can that be? There's a 100%+ markup on everything in the store. Everything.
Click to expand...
There's no markup on the music and movies at FYE. They're selling at MSRP. Big box stores sell them to you at half the cost because they're selling them to you AT COST. They're not making any profit on those whatsoever.
 
Never been to an FYE, but I imagine it's like HMV/Sunrise Records in Canada.

I shop there for their random sales/promotions and a couple of discs that no one else carries, but would never pay full price for a new release when best Buy/Future Shop would have it for $5-10 less.
 
They turned an out-of-business Wherehouse store into an FYE here in Riverside last year. It lasted about 6 months before it was out of business and turned into a shoe store.
 
I think I made this exact same thread last year :lol . I ended up just selling the card on ebay.
 
akachan ningen said:
They turned an out-of-business Wherehouse store into an FYE here in Riverside last year. It lasted about 6 months before it was out of business and turned into a shoe store.
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Pretty much the same thing here. Except it's still just an empty store now.
 
Hey, it's better to have one of these things in your local mall than yet another store that caters to women's clothing.

FYE isn't entirely all that useless. Occasionally, I'll scour it and find some rare and OOP DVDs that I can add to my collection(or if I already have 'em, sell on Ebay).
 
Hari Seldon said:
With amazon prime I don't shop at any stores anymore except for food.
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Don't you have to buy a LOT to make back the $75 or whatever you pay for prime? Never understood that, to be honest.
 
Yeah the one in my mall went out of business and turned into a holiday store(decorations and items for upcoming holidays). Always found it funny that they had the hentai section was next too the regular anime section :lol , but yeah they make most there money on used stuff when it was open it seemed.
 
omg rite said:
Don't you have to buy a LOT to make back the $75 or whatever you pay for prime? Never understood that, to be honest.
Click to expand...

You can share prime with like 4 other people making the cost only $15. Pays for itself after you ship three things. Totally worth it.
 
I'm in the middle of Pennsylvania and ironically most of the FYE's I've seen staying in business are in rural malls - because their only competition is Wal-Mart, and while Wal-Mart is obviously cheaper, their selection of music is usually tiny and shallow. Same for movies. So FYE is the only place to go if you don't order online which, it seems, lots of people in the boondocks still don't know how to do.

But I see their days as numbered; no way they can continue to survive even with the used angle. Even used materials get saturated after a certain point - all the FYE's I've been in over the last year have more and more used material stacking up and not selling.
 
Kaijima said:
But I see their days as numbered; no way they can continue to survive even with the used angle. Even used materials get saturated after a certain point - all the FYE's I've been in over the last year have more and more used material stacking up and not selling.
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Definitely.

Both FYE and Suncoast Video are on the verge of dying off.

They just can't stay afloat charging what they do.



The other day, I was looking for the Alfred Hitchcock Signature Collection, which goes for about 49 dollars on Amazon or Ebay. What were they charging for it? $120.

I walked right the fuck out.
 
Can't beat it for games. Same price you would pay at any retail chain and you essentially never pay tax because of their backstage pass. Plus they are always having buy 2 get 1 free game sales, large sales on older games up to 50%, tons of worthwhile mail-in-rebates, etc. I do all my game shopping at FYE! I can just walk to the one on State Street at my lunch, love it!
 
Marty Chinn said:
You can share prime with like 4 other people making the cost only $15. Pays for itself after you ship three things. Totally worth it.
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Whoa, you can share prime? How does that work? O_O
 
omg rite said:
Whoa, you can share prime? How does that work? O_O
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You're allowed to use prime on 5 accounts, so you just authorize an account from the primary account holder. They ask you a security question like a birthday or something like that to verify you know the person but it's pretty straight forward and simple. I just split the cost up among friends so one a year they drop me $15. It's really meant for sharing between family but they don't check and don't care about ship addresses so it really is anyone.
 
Even if you don't split Prime it is worth it if you care about shipping speed. Free 2-day + cheap Overnight/Saturday >>>> Free Super Saver and certainly a huge savings over paying for expedited shipping on everything. Also, not having the $25 minimum makes 1-click shopping awesome

Phobophile said:
There's no markup on the music and movies at FYE. They're selling at MSRP. Big box stores sell them to you at half the cost because they're selling them to you AT COST. They're not making any profit on those whatsoever.
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Markup is the amount over cost, not MSRP
 
Last time I bought something at ours was way back when it was still called Listening Booth. Then it became The Wall and that's when it started to suck. And since it's changed to FYE, I don't even go in. Waste of space.
 
sangreal said:
Markup is the amount over cost, not MSRP
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No shit, and that's my point. They typically DON'T markup, but sell at MSRP. The only thing that might be marked up is their used stuff. I'm not advocating going there, but they're a straight-up retail boutique. It's gonna cost more than a big box.
 
GodfatherX said:
only thing I have bought from FYE in the last decade was Ill Bill's last cd because I couldnt find it at best buy
Click to expand...

the last CD i bought at FYE was The Eminem Show when it came out and I've hated that store ever since
 
sangreal said:
Even if you don't split Prime it is worth it if you care about shipping speed. Free 2-day + cheap Overnight/Saturday >>>> Free Super Saver and certainly a huge savings over paying for expedited shipping on everything. Also, not having the $25 minimum makes 1-click shopping awesome
Click to expand...

Well if you don't split it, it's only worth it if you buy a lot and make back your money. Otherwise, just go to the store. :P

Though splitting it sounds awesome.
 
Phobophile said:
No shit, and that's my point. They typically DON'T markup, but sell at MSRP. The only thing that might be marked up is their used stuff. I'm not advocating going there, but they're a straight-up retail boutique. It's gonna cost more than a big box.
Click to expand...

I still believe your mistaken on what markup means.....
 
I only buy games from FYE every now and then because the one near us sometimes has some rare ones for dirt cheap. Other than that, I buy nothing recent.
 
I once bought a $5 copy of Mars Matrix at FYE when it was marked as $20. That's my only FYE shopping experience ever.
 
omg rite said:
Don't you have to buy a LOT to make back the $75 or whatever you pay for prime? Never understood that, to be honest.
Click to expand...

It pays for itself around Christmas time if you have a ton of shopping to do. Not having to go out to the crowded stores + fairly cheap prices + quick shipping is definitely worth it at that time of year. The rest of the year is just a bonus.

EDIT: I also share it with my wife too which helps.
 
omg rite said:
Well if you don't split it, it's only worth it if you buy a lot and make back your money. Otherwise, just go to the store. :P

Though splitting it sounds awesome.
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Once you factor in gas and my free time being valuable, prime starts looking pretty good.
 
They aren't ALWAYS a ripoff.

They sold me FE:RD new for $10, Suikoden IV for $1, and Everquest for $.01

But yah, I don't like buying non clearance stuff from them that much.
 
Anton668 said:
I still believe your mistaken on what markup means.....
Click to expand...
I don't think my mistaken.

It can be sub-MSRP or superfluous like these boutiques. Rereading my posts, I do see that they're pretty poorly worded.
 
omg rite said:
Well if you don't split it, it's only worth it if you buy a lot and make back your money. Otherwise, just go to the store. :P

Though splitting it sounds awesome.
Click to expand...

You don't really need to buy much to make it worthwhile. You can make like one purchase a month and it'll at least even itself out if not come ahead. Between movies and games I can easily have that covered. Then there's like Christmas, and Birthday gifts, so you realize you buy more than 12 things a year. You just end up moving your shopping to Amazon for a lot of things and you realize how much easier it is.

Remember you're not paying tax at Amazon unless you live in NY so that alone is several bucks off plus on top of that Amazon tends to be at least a few bucks cheaper if not a lot cheaper. You really do make it back pretty fast. For example a $59.99 game often is sold for like $56.99. That's about $8 savings from buying it in store right there.

Also to top it off, Amazon price matched pretty much all the Black Friday sales so you got all the discounts while avoiding the crowd even before the store open and to top it off free shipping. No worry about trying to fill the basket to $25 and risk stock running out trying to fill that gap here. I'd easily pay money to get all the Black Friday deals without leaving my house. This last Black Friday was the best ever cuz of that.
 
Anton668 said:
I still believe your mistaken on what markup means.....
Click to expand...
yeah I think he is confusing MSRP with wholesale cost, while MSRP might be $16.99 on a cd, the store pays roughly $7-9 for that cd

big box stores typically have a very small mark up on these, sometimes even taking a loss, as a way to get customers in the door. This isn't to say that the record company pays that much to make the cd, as the manufacturing process is something like $0.79 of course someone will defend the record industry talking about recording budgets, promotion, overhead ect.

That's the beauty of the internet, real artist are finding success as indie artist selling on iTunes or their own website

sorry for the rant
 
Hari Seldon said:
It pays for itself around Christmas time if you have a ton of shopping to do. Not having to go out to the crowded stores + fairly cheap prices + quick shipping is definitely worth it at that time of year. The rest of the year is just a bonus.

EDIT: I also share it with my wife too which helps.
Click to expand...

The first time we got Prime was cuz of Christmas. It was like a week before Christmas and we needed some last minute gifts for some of our parents and we realized the amount we were going to be paying for two day shipping at that point was a huge chunk of the Prime cost so we figure what the hell, we'll just pay for Prime. Ever since then we've loved having Prime with the no hassle and fast shipping from Amazon.

It just works out in the end and now we pretty much check Amazon first before buying anything because of Prime. A lot of the time it ends up being the best choice cuz they're cheaper, no tax, and now free 2 day shipping which is sometimes free overnight shipping for games and movies cuz they ship nearby.

Heck latest example is just a few months ago my wife bought an Asus netbook. No tax and free shipping on that. It was $10 less off the base price than buying it locally plus you saved another $32 in taxes, which is like $42 savings right there. If I bought it elsewhere it would have probably cost $20 to ship.

Again, $75 sounds a lot but you realize how quickly it pays for itself even if you don't share.
 
GodfatherX said:
yeah I think he is confusing MSRP with wholesale cost, while MSRP might be $16.99 on a cd, the store pays roughly $7-9 for that cd

big box stores typically have a very small mark up on these, sometimes even taking a loss, as a way to get customers in the door. This isn't to say that the record company pays that much to make the cd, as the manufacturing process is something like $0.79 of course someone will defend the record industry talking about recording budgets, promotion, overhead ect.

That's the beauty of the internet, real artist are finding success as indie artist selling on iTunes or their own website

sorry for the rant
Click to expand...
I clarified myself above.
 
Need to close if not already

Virgin Records
Staples
Radio Shack
Hollywood Video/Brick & Mortar Video Stores
Circuit City
J & R
 
Phobophile said:
No shit, and that's my point. They typically DON'T markup, but sell at MSRP. The only thing that might be marked up is their used stuff. I'm not advocating going there, but they're a straight-up retail boutique. It's gonna cost more than a big box.
Click to expand...

This is exactly the point. Best Buy sells their DVDs and things cheap but make little to no money on them. The movies priced at 19.99 regularly cost about 17.50-18.50 to get, so they make on average $1-$2 profit on them, or lets just say 10% which is not a lot. When they sell them for 15.99 or so the first week, they lose several dollars on each copy sold.

Why? Because it gets you in the store. They offset that loss by selling other products, such as TVs and Stereos, at a much higher profit margin. Car stereos alone are marked up almost 100% over cost. They lose or make little money on the impulse product and recoup it elsewhere in the store. Also they offset some of the cost through advertising, meaning Fox gave them a small deal on the price for promoting the movie on several pages of the ad.

Places like FYE and Barnes and Noble dont have the luxury of selling higher ticket or higher margin items, so they sell them at or just a little below MSRP. It makes them look bad to some consumers but they are running a legitimate business model,making the money on what they sell. If they sold televisions or a wider range of products they could possibly lower price. That is the problem with specialty stores.

The argument about charging MSRP is that usually stores that sell at it usually have a much wider selection of product. FYE and B&N carry a MUCH wider range of titles in their stores than a Best Buy or Target does. The higher price sucks, but you go there for the better selection available. Yes, you could get an even larger selection online, but some people just enjoy actually physically shopping and going home with the product. Some people like the interaction with people while shopping and become loyal to certain places because of it.
 
FYE will be dead in a year. I was talking to one of their store managers a couple months back, when they were closing one of the stores. He was pretty positive they didn't have much time left.
 
TiVo said:
Need to close if not already

Virgin Records
Staples
Radio Shack
Hollywood Video/Brick & Mortar Video Stores
Circuit City
J & R
Click to expand...
What's wrong with Staples? You can get school supplies there dirt cheap during those back to school sales.
 
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