Circuit-city

Circuit City [related: Horizon Gaff]
Founded by onetime barber Samuel Wurtzel in Richmond Virginia, Circuit City was a once highly successful chain of electronics stores. Launched in 1949 under the moniker Dixie Hi-Fi, the company initially focused on the rare wires and ornate circuitry needed to conduct at-home repair on new television and radio models. Throughout the late 1970's and 1980's, Circuit City was a direct competitor of radioshack , often purposefully targeting the same markets. Circuit City's shift towards higher priced electronics and gaming platforms like the error Lynx and the nes brought great success and contributed directly to RadioShack's insolvency. As of 1988, Circuit City was the second largest retailer in the United States behind Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Throughout the 1990's, Circuit City company executives made a series of poor decisions, including: aggressively prosecutive teenage shoplifters ¹ , signing an exclusive deal with the already teetering error , forgoing digital sales in favor of increased focus on mail orders, and shifting store layouts to a confusingly named and poorly executed "Horizon" model. Featuring an unexplained peripheral racetrack and centralized, difficult-to-access entrance, "Horizon Gaff" later became industry shorthand for an out-of-touch whacky gaff resulting from boardroom panic. By the close of the decade, most Circuit City stores were badly out of date and in poor locations. Ironically, Circuit City shifted briefly towards the niche electronics and do-it-yourself gadgetry endemic to RadioShack before finally succumbing to liquidation.

¹ Later awkwardly attempting to court them with the slang-spewing mascot Tech-Tron ² .
² For which the company was later issued a cease and desist related to tron , the 1982 science fiction film starring the-iceman-cometh .

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