Conn’s Home Plus, which recently announced its plans to liquidate its entire chain, is currently holding out-of-business sales throughout Houston. I wanted to stop by a Conn’s, as I hadn’t been into one in years, and see what I was missing. I decided to visit the 9567 S Main St, Houston, TX 77025 location as I was already in the area, and honestly, I was not super surprised by what I saw. The last time I went to a Conn’s was maybe 15 years ago, and I wasn’t able to buy anything, but rather, I was accompanying a friend who was buying items. In the end, I remember convincing my friend to go complete their purchase of a laptop at Fry’s for half the cost, and I felt accomplished. Walking back into Conn’s, I could see little had changed, with one exception. About 3/4 of the store was now dedicated solely to furniture. They still had a decent selection of appliances and admittedly better electronics than when Fry’s closed, but the shrinkage of these departments makes me wonder if they were in the pool.
My father has never been one for sayings, but one of his few catchphrases that sticks in my mind is, “Conn’s will con ya!” and he’s right! I was interested in the laptops, but in preparation for the liquidation, things had obviously been marked up to compensate for the sale. If nothing was marked up, then I think that points to the root of Conn’s problem. The company, which previously advertised its ease of offering credit, didn’t seem to be doing much when I visited. I believe a third party may have handled credit applications more recently, but I couldn’t get a straight answer from either of the two salesmen on the floor. It was an odd feeling; there was plenty of merchandise, some of which, like that Galaga/Ms. I seriously considered buying the Pacman cabinet, but most of it wasn’t for me, and I think that’s a big problem the chain has had. Anything I wanted to buy, I could pick up cheaper elsewhere, and without offering credit, they didn’t have much of a viable business model left. Hopefully, I can squeeze in a visit to the Conn’s in Spring before it closes the former home of the final AppleTree to open all the way in 2004!
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The Conn’s of today isn’t really what the Conn’s of the 1990s was like since they sold more higher-end electronics back in the day and their focus was on selling more appliance variety than what the big box/department stores could sell. One thing that hasn’t changed are the high-pressure commissioned salesmen, but I think ever since Conn’s really started to become more of a financing company than a retailer (not unlike a rent-to-own type place, though Aaron’s has spun-off their finance division in recent years), they started to rely even more on greasy tactics aimed at low-income customers and making questionable financing deals on their end just to inflate the retail numbers and initial profitability.
Even in the 1990s, if you were paying full price for something at Conn’s, you were probably doing things wrong. Buying something at Conn’s was like buying something from a car dealership. You would have to haggle or at least get them to price match another retailer, and then throw in some freebies like delivery, to try to get the price you wanted. In reality, even at Sears through the early 2000s at the very least, you could quite easily haggle on major appliance prices if you were so willing. Most people aren’t or weren’t even aware that it was possible to do that at a large chain like Sears. By the 1990s, after a few decades of the discount store era, most people had lost their negotiation skills or their willingness to engage in them. That was one of the reasons quoted for the initial success of Saturn cars since their dealerships had no-haggle policies.
Back in the 1990s, we were in the market for a higher-end picture-in-picture 27″ TV. Dillard’s made a compelling offer on a Sony Trinitron model, but we really wanted a Mitsubishi model that Conn’s only sold in this area at least. We brought in Dillard’s written sales proposal and with some back and forth proposals, we got the deal we wanted. Although I would have preferred buying the TV from Dillard’s than Conn’s, all else being equal, I’m glad we got the Mitsubishi given how unreliable those 1990s larger Sony TVs proved to be a few years down the road. Some might argue we should have gone with a Panasonic, Hitachi, or something like that, but it ultimately came down to the Sony and the Mitsubishi for reasons I can’t really remember now.