Revival Attempts
Shortly after the chain closed in 1989 a New Jersey-based investment group led by Alex Adjimi bought the rights to the Crazy Eddie trademark and announced in January 1990 that they had purchased the leases on Crazy Eddie's Brooklyn flagship store and another in East Brunswick, New Jersey. The intent of Adjimi's group was to reopen the chain, but nothing ever came of the attempt.
In 1998, the grandchildren of Eddie, Allen, and Mitchell Antar revived the Crazy Eddie electronics chain with a store in Wayne, New Jersey, and as an online Internet venue, crazyeddieonline.com. The revived company retained the slogan "his prices are insane" and brought Jerry Carroll, who by this time had founded his own ad agency, back as spokesman. Despite plans to expand the chain to a potential ten stores, the new Crazy Eddie did not expand beyond the Wayne store and in 1999 the only store in the revived chain closed.
Eddie Antar returned to the company in 2001, which by this point had been doing business solely as an Internet and buy-by-phone business for over a year. He relaunched the website as crazyeddie.com and once again hired Jerry Carroll to do its advertising. By 2004 crazyeddie.com had disappeared again, and after a brief attempt to revive the online retailer in 2005 Crazy Eddie ceased to exist once again. The Crazy Eddie trademark and associated intellectual property were then acquired by Texas-based firm Trident Growth Fund. In July 2006, Trident attempted to auction off the brand and the domain name crazyeddie.com on eBay, to limited success. The auction ended without the reserve price being met, the highest bid being $30,100 (US).
On March 3, 2009, it was announced that Brooklyn-based businessman Jack Gemal had bought the rights to the Crazy Eddie name and quickly launched a new online Crazy Eddie venture at pricesareinsane.com. Gemal was also reported to be scouting retail space for new Crazy Eddie retail locations, stating that he wanted to open fifty locations within the next two years. The online store, which was inactive for nearly eight months for reasons unknown, sells electronics, appliances, and accessories.
Read more about this topic: Crazy Eddie
Famous quotes containing the words revival and/or attempts:
“I do not think a revival of business will be greatly postponed by [Samuel J.] Tilden’s election. Business prosperity does not, in my judgment, depend on government so much as men commonly think.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Amid attempts to protect elephants from ivory poachers and dolphins from tuna nets, the rights of children go remarkably unremarked.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)