GoHastings.com closed down

Looks like the site is now closed down.

 

Yeah - B&M stores will be taking the slow march of markdown liquidation.

I know most folks didn't like the hassle of having the wrong item shipped, but I got a lot of rare stuff from them over the years. Whenever I got a package, I would sometimes let my daughter open it because I told her she was a good luck charm for me actually getting what I ordered.

 

R.I.P.

 

I bought quite a few LP's from them. They often had the lowest prices and their shipping cost was extremely low. I also received excellent customer service from them, they would issue return shipping labels if product needed to be shipped back. They were a great vendor to deal with while trying to obtain decent copies of the stereo Beatle reissues. Sorry to see them go. :-(

 

Glad I grabbed a nice stack of mono Beatles vinyl recently with free shipping for just little over 10 dollars a piece average.
I have a store about 30 min away and will be keeping an eye out.

 

I posted this in another thread, but I will repost here (and this thread doesn't belong in deals):

Amarillo.com reports that Hilco Merchant Resources LLC and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners LLC co-purchased Hastings and will oversee the liquidation of its assets.

Just to cut stupid talk off at the knees:

Hilco and Gordon Bros always do clearance sales the same: Raise all prices to full list prices, then slowly titrate off those list prices as time goes by. Most everything in the store will start off MORE expensive than it recently sold for on sale, even with the paltry discount. Discounts will be promoted as "up to XX%" with the only items actually at the maximum those with huge markups and which never sell at retail.

Highly sale-able items are often transferred out of the stores in backend deals before the sale starts, or before larger discounts are applied.

Junk merchandise never sold in the stores is often transferred into the stores for the sale.

By the time the discounts are good, nothing much of value will be left.

To be clear: GoHastings no longer exists and the stores and inventory within them do not belong to GoHastings. They were sold, in place, as is, to Hilco and Gordon Brothers. And their business is to extract every penny possible from that inventory in a systematic manner. And they are not desperate.

 

Went to the Killeen, TX location while on vacation today.

Nothing over 30% off. New cds and lps were 10% off and used cds and lps were 30% off. Considering the markup that Hastings usually does, there wasn't many bargains to be found. I found a Kansas remaster I was looking for, but other than that - not much. There isn't a Hastings in my area where I usually live, but there are 3 or 4 on the way back, so maybe by the time vacation is over, the % off will be higher...who knows.

NJB

edit: I just re-read the post above mine, and it seems that's the way it's going, although there were umpteen signs assuring me that there was "Nothing Held Back"...

 

Didn't Hilco and Gordon Bros manage the selloff of Tower Records inventory 10 years ago? If it wasn't them, it was someone with the same approach. Real pro's at optimizing the value of an inventory, these guys. Just don't bother to look for any real bargains.

 

I commented elsewhere that it would seem that Tower (& Virgin, Wherehouse, etc) were liquidated in the same way but back then, I don't think the process had been honed to anything close to what it is today. I don't recall the of bringing in of other junk inventory. The discounts were fairly regular across the board. One exception I recall pretty clearly was that rap hit 90% off while everything else was at 70% but the signage still said "up to 70% off" in keeping with the discounts marching on in a somewhat predictable manner (rather than a lure of "up to 90% off").

These days, it seems the formula at any liquidation is exactly the same. Kind of makes you say "there's nothing to see here, move along". At Sports Authority recently, it said "up to 60% off" when I went in there but it had to be a tiny portion of the inventory which was at that point. Some stuff remained at a paltry 10% off and everywhere in between.

 

Hilco bid to be the Tower liquidator, but Great American won that process and managed the liquidation. It was done the exact same way, though...

Hilco bought the collapsing HMV chain, though.