Circuit City Still Expanding

Circuit City Stores Inc. (Richmond, Va.) plans to open 65 to 70 Superstores in its upcoming fiscal year, which begins March 1. Roughly half of those stores will be relocations, while the rest will be entries into new trade areas, company officials say.

“Last year, we completed an extensive analysis to identify the characteristics of a successful store,” says W. Alan McCollough, chairman, president and ceo. “Specific real estate site features were among those key characteristics. As a result, one of the priorities for determining our store-opening plans is the availability of superior real estate that meets our site requirements. Based on the availability levels, we expect to open 65 to 70 Superstores in the upcoming fiscal year. Slightly more than half of these stores will be relocations; the remaining stores will be entries into new trade areas, either in our existing or new smaller markets.”

The consumer electronics retailer, which operates 618 Circuit City Superstores and five mall-based stores in 159 markets, also announced total sales in December 2003 of $1.71 billion, a 1 percent drop from a year earlier.

“Our December sales performance varied significantly by category,” McCollough notes. “We produced exceptionally strong comparable-store sales growth in new and advanced technologies such as digital, LCD and plasma televisions; digital satellite systems; digital imaging products; digital audio products and satellite radio, as well as in DVD movies. These results include substantial growth in Web-originated sales during the month. Comparable-store sales growth in personal computer hardware was driven by double-digit sales growth in notebook computers and monitors. We also continued to see sales growth in the traffic-driving music software category. But weak sales in many other categories, particularly home audio and video game hardware and software, more than offset the sales strength in new and advanced technologies.”