The Big Fat Marketing Blog

Remember Crazy Eddie? Remember The Wiz?

In case you haven’t heard, big box consumer electronics chain Circuit City today filed for bankruptcy. The company, which has seen sales plummet during the past several quarters due to eroding consumer confidence (not to mention fierce competition from Best Buy), announced just last week that it was closing about 155 stores in order to cut its losses (with 566 stores to remain open).

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It’s hard to believe that it’s only been three years—less, in fact—that Talbots has owned J. Jill. It seems like much longer to us; it probably seems much longer to Talbots, too: As we reported Friday, J. Jill is on the selling block.

What will Talbots get for it? Certainly not the $517 million it paid for the women’s apparel cataloger/retailer in 2006. Even then, industry watchers were surprised at J. Jill’s hefty price tag. more

So often, catalogers incur big hits with postage rate increases. But, seemingly lost in the fiscal shuffle are sky-rocketing paper prices and their ramifications for the industry.

The fourth quarter marks the sixth straight price rise for paper. Most of the major mills announced price increases for many paper grades — $3 per hundredweight (cwt) or $60 per ton — effective Oct. 1. And with every closure or temporary machine shutdown, paper mills hope to “limit supply and, hopefully, keep prices up,” says Dan Walsh, vice president of catalog/publication papers at distributor Bradner Smith & Co. more

If the media landscape today feels like a Bob Dylan song, it should. The mass media mindset is being replaced (by necessity) by segmented, niche media. The Wall Street Journal offers up proof with the economic fates of cable TV (niche) and broadcasters (mass) revealed.