Suncoast, the DVD store in Park Plaza Mall, is closing its doors. This means I will have no other compelling reason to go to the mall beyond Chick-fil-A. This seems to be a pattern in entertainment media – they can’t seem to survive in malls anymore. Retail music stores have all but disappeared from malls, at least in Arkansas. Camelot Music, Musicland, Sam Goody…I’ve seen them all close between here and Missouri. There’s still a Sam Goody in McCain Mall, but I would wager that it will close within the next few years.
Of course the culprits are Amazon.com and Best Buy. I guess it’s just the natural evolution of the business, but I’ll miss the concept of a specialty DVD store. The only other place I can go to get obscure movies is Barnes & Noble, the place that never sells below retail.
Anyway. Going out of business sale at Suncoast. So far, it’s 20% off anything in the store, which in most cases puts the prices close to the Amazon.com rates (but still mostly higher than, say, DeepDiscountDVD.com).
About the only stores left in small town Fla. are FYEs which are the latest incarnation of Sam Goody or the like. I enjoy going in to browse the selection, but the mark-up is astronomical on all their products. It seems to me that their market is mostly tweens and teens (and others) who want to satisfy the ownership urge quickly. In many ways I know that it is extremely value-conscious shoppers like myself who would rather order online and wait to save some cash who are driving these businesses out of malls. I do worry about the health of many brick-and-mortar operations in light of rising transportation and labor costs.