More Updates From The Retail Trenches

After my underwhelming experience with Best Buy Store #133 on Tuesday night, I thought I'd share another Sacramento-area retail datapoint, from Circuit City's Elk Grove, CA outlet (where I bought the Xbox 360 HD DVD peripheral last night). The store manager I talked with had gotten in 10 Sony PlayStation 3s the previous afternoon, a number which he didn't know in advance of the truck's arrival and which far undershot the number of interested buyers that had been queued up in line outside beginning Tuesday. He grumbled that he'd heard a nearby Target store got 25 units, and that Best Buy down the street also got a larger allocation than he did. His parcel completely consisted of the high-end $599 SKU, and he had no clue when he'd be getting more units. He admitted that he wasn't confident of seeing any more PS3s arrive before Christmas (although he hoped to be surprised).

Regarding the Nintendo Wii, he indicated that he had 30 units safely locked up in the store's warehouse (they'd arrived earlier that week), available for sale first thing Sunday morning, and that generally speaking the words he'd been hearing from Circuit City corporate headquarters suggested that Wii supply would be robust through the holiday shopping season. And regarding Microsoft's Zune, he was pretty pleased with sales so far; although he pointed out that new brands typically have a slow initial uptake, he'd personally already sold 10 units so far that week and had also gotten positive sales feedback from his staff. I found it very difficult to suppress a giggle, though, when he kept referring to the device as a 'Zune iPod'