Downfall
Despite Best Buy's major efforts, they failed to generate the results they were looking for with Musicland, losing $85 million in 2002. As a result, they put the company up for sale and were likely just weeks away from liquidating the entire chain when they found a buyer in Sun Capital Partners of Boca Raton, Florida. Sun Capital Partners acquired the company in a cash-free transaction in exchange for acquiring Musicland's debt and leases. Sun Capital attempted to get the company back to basics, but in December 2005 they announced the closure and liquidation of all remaining Media Play stores.
In December 2005, Minnetonka, Minnesota-based Musicland Group, which owned Media Play, announced it would close all 61 stores by the end of January 2006 and refocus on its Sam Goody and Suncoast chains.
Media Play had been unprofitable for a number of years. In late 2005, it increased its advertising and sales promotions, but to no avail. It is thought that the unprofitability, caused by competition from Wal-Mart, Best Buy, and online retailers such as Amazon.com, was the major factor in the decision to close the retail chain.
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Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)