Sharper Image in final throes, stores being liquidated, then shuttered
By Ryan Block 
posted Jun 1st 2008 8:32PM
posted Jun 1st 2008 8:32PM
Not that anyone really expected Sharper Image to make a comeback after getting put up for sale, but Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners (the same peeps who gutted CompUSA) are putting the lame brand out of its misery, liquidating all 86 remaining stores nation-wide. Apparently the fire sale will offer between 20-40% off retail prices (meaning they'll still be making a healthy margin on all their overpriced crap), so if you just can't bear the thought of not having a deeply discounted Shiatsu foot massager / fish de-scaler / clock-radio then get the gettin' while the gettin's good.
Final throes(TM) is a trademark of Fox News. Thanks and bye.
I hate to burst your bubble... ooooh, I hope that's not trademarked by "Mr. Bubble" bubble bath... but an expression is NOT able to be trademarked
not to mention im pretty sure that final throes had been said at some point in history before someone from fox news said it
TM this!!!!!!!!! That expression has been used since the cave men. The whole idea of TM-ing a common phrase just goes to show how stupid some are. (and the people that record the mark)
actually, you guys are right. It's "Last Throes(TM)" I wuz thinkin of
@Dave the attorney
Michael Buffer disagrees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let's_get_ready_to_rumble!
Another bites the dust.
:D
Good riddance!
"Shiatsu foot massager / fish de-scaler / clock-radio"
I'm pretty sure these are offered in a 3-in-1 model, as well.
The door can hit them on the way out, as far as I'm concerned.
I think that was implied...
I'm pretty sure that was implied. Otherwise, the OP would be lame, since any of those objects by themselves are perfectly legit...
I would like to know 2 things? The first, when are they going to be going out of business? The second, does anyone know if the sale will be on their website too? As I have a gift card that I would like to be able to use, but their is nothing that you can really buy from them for just $25, which sucks. Thanks, Jeff.
Last I checked they weren't accepting gift cards...... I guess you're screwed.....that is unless Brookstone is still has that offer available where you can trade your gift card in for 10% any Brookstone item.
SHARPER IMAGE CORPORATION:
CUSTOMER & MERCHANDISE GIFT CARD POLICY
This policy is purely voluntary. It applies to all Gift Cards, Reward Cards, Gift Certificates and Merchandise Certificates issued prior to the Company's petition for protection under chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code (February 19, 2008).
If you choose to redeem your card/certificate, you must purchase merchandise equal to twice the current value of the card/certificate in order to redeem it.
If you choose to redeem your card/certificate, you may not redeem a partial amount. Cards/certificates must be redeemed in full.
How does it work? If you have a $25 card/certificate, you must purchase at least $50 to be able to use it. If you have partially used your card/certificate before March 7, 2008, you must spend twice the remaining balance.
A Customer who does not wish to redeem his or her card/certificate as part of this program may have a priority claim in Sharper Image's bankruptcy case. In a bankruptcy case, priority unsecured claims get paid prior to general unsecured claims, although there is no assurance of payment. Information about filing a claim and claim forms can be obtained on the following website:
www.kccllc.net/sharperimage
or by calling the following number: 800.344.5555
unfortunately people still fall prey to Bose and its gimmicky products.
Trust me: The Bose stuff is better than Sharper Image products any day. Not saying it's perfect, but I am saying you're comparing apples to pears (close, but still not close enough).
hey hey hey
don't bring pears into this
pears are awesome
use lemons or something
@gabe
Unfortunately, Bose (and Monster) is a good example of how important marketing can negate the crappiness of any product.
Sharper Image is an example of how you can only take marketing so far...
You guys are all at least partly wrong. Monster is high margin overpriced crap, at least for the digital cables like HDMI. A digital signal either gets there or it doesn't...having triple gold plated connectors doesn't make it any better. (Additionally, I read an independent test that showed that not even a group of audiophiles could tell the difference between their (Monster's) analog stuff and coat hangers...but that's another story.)
Bose, on the other hand, is legit company that spends a lot on their research and development. Granted, their products are very expensive, and plenty of people might say they're not worth it, but they are still superior products to the competition. Look up the incredible active car suspension Bose developed, as an example of what they can do with their R&D processes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSi6J-QK1lw
Screw that, lemons are awesome too. I like pears as well, so the apples can stay (unless they're green, green apples are good). Need another lame fruit though, maybe red apples to fuji apples? Or just ditch both and go with vegetables, much less controversy with the greenies.
Reader, we have the same taste in fruits!
Compare it to seeded grapes.
OH MY GOD! THEY'RE HAVING A FIRE...sale.
+1 for arrested development reference
@Tim
And -1 for making it less cool by pointing it out.
I just went into one yesterday when I saw that 20-40% off sale, and uh it was like 99% 20% off only, heh, not a big discount for us consumers. They have some really nifty stuff in there, but I would never pay those outrageous discount prices.... If only that foldable bike was like 150-200$ I'd jump on that fast.
First Sharper Image next Brookstone.
i wish you were kidding...
How can you call this stuff crap? I mean, where else can you find a Shiatsu foot massager / fish de-scaler / clock-radio?
It's too bad they're going out of business, too. I heard they were researching a flame retardant candle/fire extinguisher/ pacifier. Now that's cutting edge, guys. Genius.
Sharper Image, how I will miss thee. Anyone care to pay his or her final respects?
Soon as I finishing barfing.
me too, but its clak.....
people who arent corporate whores care.
No Macs=Why they didn't go under 3 years ago.
So, no respect for a store and a brand that set the trend for gadget stores before there was an internet, big brand stores and iPods? Nice. So, the place wasn't for you? How many here spent time in one, played with the shite and had a good time? This was ground zero for the gadget craze and the only fuck up is the fact that the mgmt wasn't good enough to change the model to reflect the retail trend changes. And the biggest? The hedge fund that thought they could run it better than into the ground.
NO. it's only because other American stores learned how to screw the consumer easier.
"American" retail screwed itself by creating the big-box store concept and training the consumer to wait for sales and never pay ticket for anything. Each Christmas this proves itself out as the sales come earlier and the customer waits longer for the better deal as they've been trained to by the desperate retailer trying to beat LY earnings. The internet is a double-edged sword for retailers as they've never reached more people as people find that their local specialty shop ain't the only game in town. Too many places to find the same thing at equally ranging prices and deals. It will come down to the customer re-learning that they can't get that deal anymore at the expense of manufacturers and retailers having to pay higher wholesale at the expense of profit. Retailers will have to re-train the customer that the day of the deal is over and it'll come as there is less and less competition.
Don't worry folks. This is the first of very many stores to be going out of business. There are going to be many more to come especially after so called Black Friday. This year Black Friday will become known as "The Day the Retail Community Bled To Death".
I'm surprised Engadget writers don't like Sharper Image's overpriced crap. They are Apple fanboys, afterall.
So sad but true...
One evening during the winter I had spent about 40 minutes at the Apple Cube Store in Manhattan and it was packed. They had recently introduced the MacBook Air so lots of people came to play with it.
Around the corner and down the block was a Sharper Image store I passed on my way to the subway. It was still open, but I swear it looked like a morgue. There were more salespeople than customers and there appeared to be about three salespeople. It's a fairly deep store but there just wasn't anyone to be seen. The rumors about Sharper Image closing down had already started to circulate. I'm sure the end is near. I loved their catalogs, but never bought a single thing from them due to their high prices and the stuff they sold just seemed unnecessary to own. Sharper Image R.I.P.
I don't get all the hate on Sharper Image. The store itself is pretty cool and some of the products in the store were actually good. Sharper Image did showcase some really good robotic products before you could get them elsewhere. It was the first place you could buy a Pleo in the USA.
The crap products were rebranded Emerson garbage audio products you could buy at Wal-Mart for half the price.
The biggest problem with the store is that they began to rely on margin building products due to being a publicly traded company to raise the bottom line. This cheapened the store and helped bring about the fall. They needed the margin products to recover from the Ionic Breeze lawsuits, which were a bunch of bull. It was never proved that the Ionic Breeze caused any harm. They may have not worked as well as some other units but they were not dangerous. I did read up on it. If they were a dangerous product they would not be sold at all, and they still are.
Besides anyone that calls the Sharper Image overpriced crap and wears Nike, Adidas, or other name brand shoes are total hypocrites. A $90 pair of Nike shoes costs $10 a pair or less to make in China. Wake up, nearly everything sold by major corporations today is a total overpriced piece of crap. Blame it on the companies that exploit cheap labor and blame it on retailers that force 70% margin on suppliers.
"The Sharper Image" was nothing but a pile of overpriced yuppie nonsense.
Also, I thought "last throes" was a trademark of Dick Cheney (remember that the insurgents were "in their last throes" about four years ago).
hey that reminds me of my comment! can't figure out why...
Is there some reason no one wants to use the ™ key? Or the ® or © keys?
Oh no! now I need to find another place to get monster cables!
The biggest problem with that store is that the people at the top mismanaged the hell out of it and then cut the stores loose so they could cash in their chips. I worked at a Sharper Image right up until the final day. I think you all should know that they made us sign away our right to severance pay shortly before they started selling the stores to hilco management. Hilco, to my knowledge has yet to pay out on any of their severance pay either. So the thing you have to realize, moreso than the fact that people were stupid enough to buy that cheap chinese-knockoff bullshit in the first place, is that ALOT of workers were put out of a job by this. Also, I am personally so sick of hearing people whine about gift cards. If you have 25 bucks on a gift card, take it to Brookstone and use it to get a discount. if you have some large amount in gift cards, then it's your own fault for not just spending the money when you got it, every single gift card issued anywhere is at risk of turning out the same way. In close, We are all very sorry to inconvenience you by taking away the place you went to go sit in filthy ass floor model massage chairs and ask stupid questions about product you neither understand nor need.
Additionally, don't buy anything from the closing stores, the less they sell the longer hilco has to keep paying the people that work there. Yeah, the prices will get low, but none of it was worth shit to begin with.
[/rant]
hey you were great in A History of Violence
Wow, the actor from 'The Rock', 'A History of Violence', and 'National Treasure 2' worked at Sharper Image. Cool!
Sigh...Now where will I find a free filthy massage chair?? :(
Good thing we used that gift card to get semi useful stuff earlier. For the longest time we couldn't figure out what we wanted to get. We never use the radio pedometer, but at least the scale tells us how fat we are.
Well, one thing is for sure, I'll miss working there. Was kinda fun playing with and selling the stuff all day, though in NYC it gets tough to tell people they can't use their gift cards. Yeah, I got like $250 in store credits too, and I can't even use them either!
Shit, where am I going to find an over-priced Ionic Breeze now?
I wonder how Brookstone is doing? I'd hate to see them die before I can save up enough to get one of their kick ass massaging recliners. I swear to god when you sit down in one of those things you can see though time and space.
How can they afford to pay shills in a time like this?
1) The ironic breeze DID cause harm. I got a dry/scratchy throat whenever I walked near one and lingered longer. People have had pets turn a shade of blue because of lung damage...etc. So no sympathy that they couldn't afford lawsuits. Note that the lawsuits never totaled more than the price of items sold, so even less sympathy.
2) Who cares about a robotic chimp head? A douche near where I lived in IA bought one....and they recently had their house foreclosed. As far as I'm concerned, me not having to bail out people who buy stupid crap > Sharper Image selling some monkey heads.
who knew that a sharper image post could bring up monkey heads and douches?
Wow, Pavan's sniffy nose has once and for proved the insidious dangers of negative ions. It's a good thing they can only be found near "ionic breeze" devices!
And what's with the rant against chimp heads? Mine is freakin' awesome, and regularly helps me out (HOV passenger; keeping grandchildren out of my goodie closet), etc. 'Course I didn't get it at Sharper Image, but that's only because the entire inventory of SI has been on the 'Bay for years.
Sharper Image: Nice Looking stuff, good store layout, crazy prices (never bought anything from them)
"if you just can't bear the thought of not having a deeply discounted Shiatsu foot massager / fish de-scaler / clock-radio"
What!?! No nose-hair-trimming feature? Then it's not worth going out of my way.
Are they serious with a 40% off final offer? Nowadays, that's where you start discounting, not where you end up. They must still mistakenly think people are jonesing for their techno-trash.
Airplane flights are going to be so much more boring without SI's ridiculous section in SkyMall to chortle at.
Hot dog cooker with spots for the dog and two bun halves anyone?
Unfortunately, Bose (and Monster) is a good example of how important marketing can negate the crappiness of any product.
About 15 years ago, I bought a set of Bose bookcase speakers for my parents. They were about 1/10th the size of the speakers that they were intended to replace, yet the woofer was vastly superior to the old speakers. You didn't have to crank up the bass that much to hear the thumping of the woofers in the old speakers.
I've got a Sony stereo that is about 8 years old, and the speakers are about twice the size of the Bose speakers and the tweeters in the Sonys aren't as good as the tweeters in the Bose speakers.
Bose products are superior to those of its competitors, whehter Asian or European.
Tell me when they cut 20-40% off the Xbox system. Then I will probably buy one...and something from them.
http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/product/sku__HC001
This company shouldn't have even started...
$299!!!
WHAT THE F^&%!
"The StressEraser focuses your mind and guides your breathing to synchronize with a calming BreathWave™ pattern."
It tells you how to breath, just in case you forgot...
http://www.sharperimage.com/us/en/catalog/product/sku__BZ100
It keeps getting worse.
For anybody that really wants to make music, use Reason 4 and a USB Keyboard with some knobs, maybe a KAOSS Pad and some other junk at Musicians Friend...
Good riddance, SI was always an asshole magnet. Who cares if some corporate plebes got some corporate giftcards and they can't use them. bwah ha ha ha ha!
But seriously, how bout this company, eh? They buy up stores like SI and CompUSA and shut them down for the betterment of mankind. They are almost like superheroes!
I saw this coming like so many. Sharper Image was one of those, a fairy tale long time ago, high end spot. But competition marginalized their sales. Then they started to brand their own stuff b/c the competition was selling the same thing, and at better prices. Brookestone does the same thing you know. But I believe their stuff is much higher quality then SI. Much higher.
I can go on but who really give a shi@. They be history. Next on the choping block, them tired ass sells folks at Radio Shi$ I hate that damn place.
And the beat goes on!
I work for a company that manages and tracks gift cards, and I've been following this issue for sometime now on savvywallet.com. Leveragecard.com initialized a bankruptcy policy for consumers that purchased The Sharper Image gift card on our website. You can email me at austin@leveragecard.com and I can check our records to see if your card was purchased through us. If it is, then you're in luck and you can swap it with any of our other retailers.