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In 1949, Samuel S. Wurtzel opened the first Wards Company retail store in Richmond, Virginia. By 1959 Wards operated four television and home appliance stores in Richmond. The company continued to grow and acquire more stores in other locations including Albany, New York; Mobile, Alabama; Washington, DC; and Costa Mesa, California. During the 1970s and early 1980s it also sold mail-order under the name Dixie Hifi, advertising in the hifi magazines of the day. In Richmond, Wards experimented with several retail formats including smaller mall outlets branded "Sight-n-Sound", "Circuit City", and lastly "Ward’s Loading Dock", its first big box format. The large format store clicked with consumers, as did the Circuit City name. They were combined into the retail format "Circuit City Superstore", which then went national.
I can’t say that I’m sad… virtually every time I’ve been to a Circuity City, I’ve been disappointed, insulted, accosted and ripped off. In fairness I can’t say Best Buy was significantly better, but it has always been better.
The problem now is that Circuity City is liquidating all its assets and is out of business. Here in South Florida, Best Buy is the only major competition and with it gone, prices are sure to skyrocket. With the economy what it is today, I don’t know that we’ll see viable competition. Here’s for crossing my fingers.
Source: The history portion was taken from Wikipedia.
Update: The Consumerist has published an interesting blog post on the subject.
