SmartCo Denver closing all stores already!

[klkla]

Wow! They gave it four months to work LOL.

http://www.progressivegrocer.com/top-st ... 31573.html

I wonder what Smart & Final management was thinking in the first place. To fail so bad and so quick is amazing. In all the years I've followed this industry I think this is the shortest-lived venture I've ever seen.

[Alpha8472]

The thing about Smart & Final has always been their pricing. Smart & Final stores have terrible pricing. The selection isn't very good either. Their venture into more of a supermarket type of a store has not impressed anyone.

Four months isn't enough time to gain customers and see how well this concept would really work. The company's management is making some very random and rash decisions. This is very dangerous as they should be looking at the long term outlook instead of just a few months of poor performance. If they wasted money to open these stores, they should give it some time to see how it does over the long run.

[storewanderer]

SO, putting Smart & Final, Cash & Carry, Sun Harvest, Henry's, and whatever other formats they have all under all one roof all hundreds (thousands?) of miles from distribution centers, in stores that were previously low volume Albertsons didn't work? Who would have thought?

I'm sorry but I'm almost laughing about this.

I'm surprised they shut them down this fast though.

The real issue I see is they are opening MORE SmartCo Stores elsewhere?

And what happened to Smart & Final Extra? Wasn't that supposed to be their new format? I guess that was last year's format. The Reno Smart & Final Extra is not very good. Not very good quality, not very good selection, not very good prices, and terrible service. It seems to do a little bit of business. Probably because the nearest competition is Save Mart, very weak. I suspect a Safeway or Kroger run store nearby would have put it out of business already.Their Cash & Carry Store (moved into the old Smart & Final) is a winner though, you can barely tell they run it.

[storewanderer]

Interesting comments from customers:

http://www.denverpost.com/commented/ci_ ... commented-

http://www.9news.com/news/article.aspx? ... &catid=339

[klkla]

Interesting comments from customers:

The comments were interesting. Seemed like most consumers were not even aware they existed and most of those that new about them thought their pricing wasn't very good.

The best comment was from one guy that said "Maybe someone [in Smart and Final management]had a girlfriend here". That's about the only reason I could think of for this disastrous strategy LOL.