RETAIL WARS
An economic “weeding” in Orange County’s Santa Ana area leaves substantially fewer mobile electronics retailers in its wake. Three shops that weathered the storm credit different strategies: downsizing, upsizing, and sizing up the future. By Solomon Daniels
Orange County, California is best known for its Repub- lican leanings, TV “Housewives,” puck-slinging Ducks, Angels in the outfield, and the soon-to-be wooing of a cer- tain Northern California basketball team. Cities like Yorba Linda, Laguna Niguel and Newport Beach do well to up- hold the glamorous reputation. But Santa Ana, home to the county seat, is in many ways a contrast to this impression, with more than 350,000 primarily middle-class residents. In 2005, if you were to take a ride south through Santa Ana from the 22 Freeway on Harbor Boulevard, you wouldn’t be able to look left or right without seeing a car stereo shop as you made your way toward the beach. Today is a differ- ent story.
“There used to be somewhere between 14 to 18 stores on that stretch of Harbor Boulevard,” said Joe Khalil, owner
38 Mobile Electronics April | May 2011
of Electronic Warehouse/Bristol Sound in Santa Ana. “Now, I count about six.” Khalil’s store is not on Harbor, a decision he made
early on when searching for an available building in 2000 because of the enormously high rents along the busy thor- oughfare. “A lot of guys were paying a ton of money to be located there, but when the economy tanked, they couldn’t afford it,” he explained. “OC Sound, Harbor Sound, Bow Down Autosound, Pro Autosound and H&W Motorsports were just some of the stores that closed their doors.” Three survivors of the downturn each used different methods for keeping their bays open, and while they are competitors, the larger challenge of the economic climate overshadowed the one-upsmanship that is typically preva- lent with stores in close proximity to one another.
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