Today is the start of “going out of business” sales at all Circuit City stores. Having worked at Best Buy for so long, this is a time of mixed emotions for me. Let me rewind a bit to explain…

During the 1990s. Circuit was a national player — the bohemoth with whom Best Buy was striving to compete. At that time, we (at Best Buy) were only a regional player, entering new markets one at a time and slowly overcoming mid-size foes like Highland, Fretter, and Silo. At the time, CIrcuit City was big time, a grownup - we, the adolesecents, only hoped to one day be as big.

For me personally, a large part of my mid-90s job responsibility was managing Best Buy’s competitive shopping teams. Like all electronics retailers, we had – and still have – a team of employees whose full-time job  was to shop the competition and adjust our pricing to meet or beat our competitors. Working this team, my coworkers and I displayed instantaneous response times and a fierce loyalty to Best Buy, mixed with a fair amount of covert behaviors and, in retrospect, a pretty unhealthy level of competitive spirit.

So, I admit, I’ve shopped Circuit stores quite a bit, mostly while reciting their posted prices into a hidden microrecorder. I’ve listened to their sales pitches, to determine how far they’d cut a price to make the sale. I’ve taken photos of their displays. I’ve reverse-engineered their sales strategies. And, I’ve told my fair share of Circuit City jokes.

In recent years, though, Circuit has just become… well… sad. Their strategy slowly turned into cloning Best Buy. Their store employee uniforms, operating model, pay structure, and marketing strategy all became eerily similar to ours. At one point, they even went on an all-out mission to hire away our employees.

Looking back, I notice that I had hoped that Circuit would transform themselves into a formidable opponent. I liked the competition. The head-to-head battle royale. The simplicity of the rivalry.

In a few select offerings – like their online channel – Circuit City did some cool stuff. But mostly, their uniqueness just degraded, and their brand became indistinct in the market. Their demise was just a matter of time.

So, now my heart goes out to all the Circuit City employees who tried to resurrect their company. To all the people who will now look for work in this tough environment. And to all the former Best Buy employees who tried to help reinvent Circuit. Many friends are impacted by this, and I pray that they find success for themselves and their families.

And, I mourn the loss of a rivalry that, in the consumer electronics space at least, felt like the cola wars.

At the same time, my mind turns to the future of consumer electronics. CE has long been a cutthroat environment, with many technologies, suppliers and retailers competing for attention. Like so many industries, the retail landscape has moved from local to national players. From brick-and-mortar to online. And from specialty to mass merchandisers.  

The game has changed before, it’s transforming now, and it’s sure to keep changing in the future.

Still, this feels like a watershed moment – like shopping for electronics may transform to a completely new game. What that will look like, I’m not sure. Many forces are at work here. Lots of potential directions, the situation even more tenuous in today’s economy. Frankly, it’s a little scary.

But, Best Buy is grown up now. We’ve learned to stay on our toes and keep transforming ourselves.

And, personally, I’m up for it. My response will be to build on what I’ve learned — responding quickly, redoubling my loyalty – and figure out how to win in this new game.

Hopefully I won’t need that old microrecorder.