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Circuit City Corporation, Inc., formerly Circuit City Stores, Inc., is an American consumer electronics retail company, which was founded in 1949 by Samuel Wurtzel as the Wards Company, operated stores across the United States, and pioneered the electronics superstore format in the 1970s.
Wurtzel’s father, Sam Wurtzel, opened a television store known as Wards, the first location in the eventual Circuit City empire, in Richmond, Va., in 1950. The idea came to him when he was passing through the city, stopped for a haircut and heard the barber talking about the South’s first television station, which had just debuted there.
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Father and son Samuel S. Wurtzel and Alan L. Wurtzel propelled the Circuit City Stores into a conglomerate specializing in consumer electronics, digital video programming, music software, and automobile sales. Today it is the United States' largest retailer of brand name consumer electronics and appliances. This remarkable growth started from the s...
Samuel S. Wurtzel was born in Sea Bright, New Jersey, March 2, 1907, the son of Jacob and Flora Wurtzel. He was an accounting student at the Pace School, at City College, and New YorkUniversity. He married Ruth Mann in 1932. They had two sons, Alan and David. Samuel Wurtzel died in 1985. Alan L. Wurtzel, the older son, was born in Mount Vernon, New...
Samuel Wurtzel worked for nine years, beginning in 1938, for Packing Products in New York City. In 1949, he was on vacation with his family in Richmond when a local barber informed him that the very first Southern TV station was going to air. Wurtzel began thinking about the possibilities of this fresh market for televisions. Later that year, he mo...
It was during Alan Wurtzel's involvement with Circuit City that he began to realize the problems with the education system in the United States, and especially with the local education system. Wurtzel and his staff were frustrated with trying to hire young people who could "read, write, and interact" on a level that made them capable of working in ...
Contact at: Circuit City Stores Inc. 9950 Mayland Dr. Richmond, VA 23233 Business Phone: (804)527-4000 URL: http://www.circuitcity.com
In 1949, when Samuel Wurtzel opened Ward's--Richmond, Virginia's first retail television store--his goal was to provide the community with a new technology that would change the face of consumer electronics forever.
Oct 3, 2016 · The Circuit City story began 67 years ago with Samuel Wurtzel, who founded a chain of appliance stores called Wards to sell television sets, back when TV was still a new technology. The chain...
May 29, 2018 · In 1949, when Samuel Wurtzel opened Ward's — Richmond, Virginia's first retail television store — his goal was to provide the community with a new technology that would change the face of consumer electronics forever. More than 50 years, over 600 stores and several name changes later, the technology continues to change, but Circuit City's ...
But led by Wurtzel’s son Alan, who had become CEO in 1972, the company closed or sold a number of unprofitable outlets, and by the late 1970s it was ready to start expanding again. It did so with a new name and a new retail model inspired by the early discount stores: the Circuit City “superstore.”.
