Area Appliance Stores

[Meddle]

Saw somebody mention ABC and it triggered some memories. I know this has been done to an extent here before, but we'll try again. Did some web wandering and found some sites some of you know for sure, others maybe not:

http://technologizer.com/2008/11/10/old-retail-ads/

http://www.dbusiness.com/DBusiness/S...il-Reimagined/

http://www.detroitfunk.com/?m=200412

http://www.waterwinterwonderland.com/retail.asp

Who can forget ole' google-eyed Ollie Fretter?

Highland Appliance "any minute now....."

ABC Warehouse was just an upstart trying to get a foothold. They had a few stores and were just becoming a competitor to the others.

By 1988, ABC operated 15 retail appliance stores in Michigan and Ohio and 10 Mickey Shorr retail and installation outlets, all located in Michigan. The company began to focus on advertising to help spur growth. Early ads featured Jim Varney and his “KnoWhutlMean?” slogan. ABC’s position in the market was further enhanced when the NATM Buying Corporation selected ABC Warehouse as its Detroit affiliate. NATM, a large appliance buying group, had previously been affiliated with Highland Superstores, an ABC competitor.

During the late 1980s, ABC pioneered the sale of cellular telephones. The phones were first sold through Mickey Shorr and White Automotive. Although cellular phones requiring installation remained linked to the company’s automotive outlets, an innovation termed the “bag phone” enabled ABC Warehouse stores to sell transportable cellular phones. As a result, ABC achieved recognition as the first NATM member to successfully sell cellular phones at retail.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2841400010.html

We had so many choices between those and Sear's, Ward's and all the neighborhood/regional stores. Seemed like everybody was selling TVs and washers, dryers, refridgerators and air conditioners.

I can remember spending a whole day running between them comparing prices and trying to negotiate better deals.

[Gannon]

Cellular phone sales in Metro Detroit were pioneered in 1985 by Tom Parks at Birmingham Autosound through his aggressive affiliation with both Cellular One and Ameritech Mobile. I was the manager of BA for a while in 1986, and we had some of the heaviest hitters in the marketplace through our doors getting those huge briefcase phones...it was a big deal when the first clunky all-in-one Motorola that looked like a miniature WWII field phone came in!

I still have my stylish brick NEC 200...and remind the fine folks at Verizon exactly how long I've been a client whenever they try to screw with my account. I casually mention that I've been on their brain-cancer plan since 1988...and have kept all of my old phones for an art project in case I ever actually develop any problems. It gets an amazing response, usually in my favor.


The late 70s and throughout the 80s were a curious time in the hifi industry, when Highland and Fretter geared up their product and sales force...Adray, too, at least for those of us on the westside.

I started at Tech Hifi in June of 1981, which was an 80-plus store chain out of Boston...that bumped up against the eastern expansion of a chain called Schaak Electronics from Minneapolis. They stalemated in the Metro Detroit market, although Tech Hifi owned the College Towns...including Ann Arbor and Lansing, and went into the Grand Rapids market before they imploded.

Detroit, in retrospect, was a microcosm of the wars fought all over the country...as Highland and Fretter expanded...these national chains all but devastated the hobbiest hifi independents who thrived here from the sixties through the eighties.

I had all but forgotten those days, until I ran into a pair of DLK .5 mini-monitors...Schaak's 'home' brand...at a client's home last month. They were in such great shape, I had to buy them off the guy.


I never quite understood what a force those two chains were...until they went away...but not after significantly altering the retail landscape.

They left a vacuum that Best Buy and Circuit City filled...I knew the background on BB from my ex-bro-in-law from Minneapolis...and am not surprised that they survived the battle after Circuit City fired all their experienced salespeople. It was only a matter of time.


There are still a few good appliance stores left, and a few of them do hifi and video pretty well...but the knowledge base is all but gone. Retired and/or left for greener pastures. About the only one I trust any longer is that joint out at 12 Mile...Paulson's...and if I got my story right, he is an old Fretter buyer. I have heard great things about Witbeck's as well...over on Woodward Avenue, and that other joint in Birmingham north of 14 seems to keep Bloomfield 'applied'.


We all made good money, even through the recession of the early 80s...but all that vanished with the advent of the internet. A whole bunch went away...the passion, the demonstrations, the ability to actually LEARN and make informed purchase decisions.


Those who only went for price were clueless, yet the industry acquiesced and all but killed themselves. There are still clients who seek out better performance, and better installations and setup...thankfully. Or I would be even thinner...and colder.

Cheers

[Ravine]

Gannon, I have a Magnavox CD player which, right from the time of its acquisition around 20 years ago, always served me well. Absolutely no problems.
Then, one day, it just... stopped working. I have no idea what is wrong. I do know that I had accidentally left it "on," for quite a while, before attempting to use it and finding it to be disabled.
Do you know of a place, in the NW Detroit/Dearborn area, that might fix 'er up for me without trying to seize an opportunity to rip me off over a problem which is, probably, minor? I don't think Alma's is still in business.

[Meddle]

I forgot about Adray and I still have a ceramic cooktop I bought there. Can't remember what all else I got from them.

I still have my Nokia 3W bag phone, but alas it's analog and won't work on any of today's systems.

[Meddle]

I have a Magnavox CD player ...

I had a MaggotBox 19" TV with some video games built in and wired paddles. Tennis, Pong and some sort of maze game. HIGH tech I tell ya'!!! Think I got that at Highland, not sure.

I can't believe I found a picture of it, but I'm pretty sure this is it:



http://www.pong-picture-page.de/cata...Csid=54a1c78d4

[Gannon]

LOL, how long did you have it before you noticed the game was etching itself into the phosphor coating inside the tube?!

That was a cluster-feck of an idea...along with those damn station ID bugs in white that suddenly appeared...we got so many 'defective' televisions back after the Gulf War started, with the CNN logo burned into the lower right corner of the screen!

[Meddle]

I didn't play the games long enough to let it burn in. Was never really into video games.

[Gannon]

Almas only closed for a short period...during an argument with the tax man.

I was overjoyed to learn that their Woodward location is still manned by a few of the original owner's sons...all old friends of mine.

Alas, that CD player is probably ready for the scrap heap...all of those laser elements wear out over time. I am not sure it is worth repairing, especially after all of the improvements in digital to analog conversion.

It will be tough to find one built that well nowadays, though...and it seems all of the ones coming out of China lack a certain...quality control. I've said before that I don't think there is a glyph for that term in their language. That, or they think it beneath them so it falls on the gaijin masses to suffer.

I'd get an Onkyo or Onkyo Integra CD changer...or perhaps a Denon...or the best bet would be to get a Mac Mini and load all of your discs into iTunes at the lowest compression rate possible...then you can slowly build a database of music you own to transfer to a portable device later if you so choose.

I just heard an outboard d-to-a convertor that makes the Mac Mini sound like a $10,000 CD player...it was quite an overwhelming experience, I'd never heard any computer sound so good. This thing used the USB output and translated it to analog RCA plugs...and made music almost as dazzling as a really good turntable...yet so much easier to access than any other source.

Gotta look up the brand...but I'm sure it is not necessary to solve your troubles now, I've got run-on brain this morning...and simply cannot turn it off.


Cheers

[Gannon]

Oh, you can always check with ABL Electronics for service estimates on it, though...they are the absolute tops in town for repairs. Expensive, but quick and good.

[Meddle]

I think it's engineered obsolescence instead of lack of quality control. You can't maintain annual sales if the products you make continue to work for decades. They gotta fail at some point so people need to buy another one.

[Gannon]

Yeah, but the sheer number of out-of-box failures is amazing...in some categories it is nearly 40%! I've seen treasured manufacturers introduce product that single-handedly shattered their previous reputation, and most of them don't offer swaps...so the retailer is forced to carry the delay in repair, it is only a matter of time before they get swamped in this ever-growing pile of trash!

Plus, those $40 CD and DVD players seem to have a six-month expiration date...fodder for land-fills all too soon!

[Meddle]

We always added another B in front of that. Bad Out Of Box.

You can infer the rest.

[DetroitPlanner]

I can remember when JC Penny used to sell large appliances too. When the Fairlane store opened, most of the first floor was devoted to it.

The local appliance dealer by my house was Piedmont appliance. Piedmont operated out of several storefronts on Joy Rd near Piedmont. That store sold darned near everything. I can also recall smaller appliance stores, one by the Edison Branch of DPL and one by the Farmer Jack's on Joy Rd near Evergreen.

[lalynch]

Lincoln Park still has Busen's Appliance which is a nice, small family run business.

[Bodybagging]

Seems to me that there was a appliance store near Downtown Hudsons, in the 70s and 80s. My grandmother bought me my very first hi-fidelity stereo system for my 13th birthday...
I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the store, but I believe it had the word House in the name.

[DetroitPlanner]

Body, that could have been either Colonial Merchandise Mart or Good Housekeeping.

[EastsideQT]

Seems to me that there was a appliance store near Downtown Hudsons, in the 70s and 80s. My grandmother bought me my very first hi-fidelity stereo system for my 13th birthday...
I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the store, but I believe it had the word House in the name.

That would be The GoodHousekeeping Shop. It was on Library St. just behind Hudson's. I worked there part-time as a file clerk when I was still in high school back in the early 60's.

[jiminnm]

Just a month or two ago, we got rid of the Sony TV that we bought at Highland Appliance. It was 18-19 years old. 4-5 years ago we got rid of our other Sony, which had been purchased at Adray maybe 20 years before. Just before moving to NM, we jettisoned the Toshiba TV that we had purchased at Fretters.

Gannon, I bought a stereo system at Tech HiFi [[Southgate) in 1978. A Kenwood amp and tuner, and a Thorens turntable. That made the trip to NM and lasted until about 2002-2003. I still have the amp but sold the other pieces [[along with a Nakamichi cassette deck that was bought at Almas). Now if I only knew how to sell the Bozak speakers that I bought at Stereoland. They still sound fantastic, but we had to put them in storage because they occupy a lot of floor space.

[waz]

Magnavox had retail outlets in the area. I recall their buildings in a kind of art deco style all in white with curved corners. One was on Van Dyke and 13 Mile and another was on Dequindre south of 11 Mile.

There was also Lafayette Electronics - Van Dyke at about 14 1/2 Mile, inside Universal Mall and on 10 Mile/I696 service drive at Scotia are ones I remember.

[Vic_doucette]

Jiminnm, you don't have Concert Grands, do you?

I was a Stereoland salesman, floating to all the stores in the company, circa 1976-77. Sold me a few of those Bozaks, but never the biggest ones.

[Gannon]

Jim,

Do you remember the fellow who sold that stuff to you? I was put down there within months of my hire in 1981, when they shuffled a few folks who were driving across town when there were closer stores, giving me the assistant manager position before I'd even turned eighteen! [[they had an official company policy to not even hire younger than that!) The Southgate store was an amazing pit of filth, the previous manager kept his DOG in the store, and they never unknotted the speaker-walls wiring...a month of 80-hour weeks turned the store around, and made my reputation in the chain. That entire time I was one of the highest grossing salespeople, AND even top-ten leader in Spiffs nationwide a few times...those were the days, we had FUN. Plus, the folks at Fretter Appliance were a blast to party with after hours [[and occasionally inbetween, ahem, our back doors were ten feet apart). I think the hifi world gradually got less fun from that point onwards.

I took some time off, and now am back...and am happy to have rediscovered my passion for this stuff.



I thought about you just the other day...was at a new clients out in Grand Rapids, and in his third room [[many enthusiasts simply keep their old gear and move it around the house if they don't have friends waiting in the wings for the upgrade discards) he had a killer old Bang and Olufsen 5000 system running a pair of Bozak Concert Grands. Those things ARE beasts...but wow, what a sound they make.


Funny thing, he confirmed my premise that the new television technology simply doesn't finesse the human machine like old analog stuff...same with digital audio technology. The old Electrohome 9" CRT projector I set up in his exercise room [[the rough equivalent to having an old Ferrari Testarosa for grocery store and church shuttles) was way more involving and interesting to watch...and less fatiguing than the new Runco DLP that must've cost him thirty grand!


I was discussing this the other day, and believe I made the perfect digital versus analog analogy...analog is like putting your hand in the Detroit River and feeling the power of the flow and the life of the water rushing through your fingers...digital is taking drops every so often and saying you are experiencing the same.


I am doing my best to sustain the remaining analog technology in my life, and that of my clients...and am overjoyed at the recent trend of vinyl production in this town. But when I go digital, it is at the highest sample rate and bit-depth that I can possibly afford.


Cheers

[Bodybagging]

GOOD HOUSEKEEPING it was! my Grandmother bought a lot of appliances there, the biggest purchase being a huge floor model freezer...... We lived on the 3rd floor, I bet the delieverymen cryed like lil girls bringing that thing up, I know we cried like lil girls taking it down when we moved to southwest, soon after.

[Onthe405]

That would be The GoodHousekeeping Shop. It was on Library St. just behind Hudson's. I worked there part-time as a file clerk when I was still in high school back in the early 60's.

EastsideQT, the owner of Good Housekeeping Shops, Bill Touscany, was my uncle. He and his Dad built the business up to 15 or so Metro Detroit stores. Bill was an extremely generous and classy guy. He was the anti-Ollie Fretter---no interest in being in the limelight or spokesperson, as he felt it was the employees who made the company. GHS was the first appliance store back in the 1920s to offer purchases on credit.

In a reversal of most Detroit area retailers, as competition intensified, the suburban stores closed first and the downtown store on Library behind Hudson's was the last one to be shuttered. He really believed in supporting Detroit and moved from his house on the Detroit Country Club in GPF into a condo downtown in the 1980s

[Gannon]

Heya Vic!

You didn't work with William Seibert...six foot eight and head of Civil Defense in town for a while...at Stereoland, didya?

That was one generation before my time...but his son Gary worked with me at the Gramophone and later on independent projects. I need to catch up with him.

Cheers!

[Gannon]

That Good Housekeeping space was where Cafe had her shop...some of the writing was still on the wall when she did her remodeling!