Closing time: Shoppers snap up bargains at Rex

Televisions and household appliances have been sailing out the door at Rex TV since the store announced its pending closure last Wednesday.

"We did $42,000 in business that day alone," Evergreen store manager Chris Brummett said. On a normal day this time of year, the store would expect to sell $3,000 to $5,000 in products.

"Over the weekend we were pretty strong. My store is almost completely bare. At one time we had about 120 TV models and now we have nine TVs," he said Monday morning.

Everything in the store was 25 percent off on Wednesday, the first day of the sale.

Gas ranges were discounted 45 percent from the first day. All floor display furniture, laundry pedestals for front-loaders and dehumidifiers were half off from the start.

Sunday's Daily Inter Lake carried an ad for 35 percent off the ticketed price of everything. Today's discount soars to 45 percent off anything remaining in the store.

It's first-come, first-served and, according to the corporate headquarters, many items were selling below cost.

It's a bonanza for customers but bad news for Brummett and his two employees.

"Rex has been invested in alternative fuels," Brummett said in explaining the corporate decision to get out of the business. "They are dropping all retail in favor of investing in alternative fuels."

Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, Rex entered the alternative energy industry in fiscal 2006 by investing in several entities organized to build and operate ethanol-producing plants, according to its Web site. It has been investing in synthetic fuel ventures since fiscal 1998.

Brummett said Rex owned 39 stores and was leasing 44 other sites from New York-based Coventry Real Estate.

"Appliance Direct is the company they will be leasing the 39 stores to," Brummett said. It's a national chain that sells a wide range of appliances on a price-cutting marketing model.

"Part of the deal was they were supposed to negotiate the lease for the other 44 with Coventry. And we are totally in the dark," Brummett said. "Nobody is telling us anything. Even the 39 stores, they know nothing."

He cited a couple of online sites that have less-than-flattering assessments of Appliance Direct. And he's less than pleased with Rex.

"There's a lot of ill thoughts toward Rex," said Brummett, who transferred from the Great Falls Rex store eight years ago. The Kalispell store opened in December 2000. "I worked for them 13 years, and I'm getting two weeks' severance pay."

Brummett said he got notice of the store's closing date about a week before the store-closing sale began. Sale prices are advertised to be good through March 22, but he thinks the business could close out possibly this Thursday.

Rex's president held a conference call with store managers in late January laying out the plans for some stores' conversions to Appliance Direct and the other stores' lease renegotiations.

"At first we all thought we were going to have jobs. They sort of made it sound that way," Brummett said, but there were no guarantees.

But overall he's not surprised by the closure.

"Sales last year were the worst I've ever seen," he said. Two or three months' worth of sales in 2004 and 2005 would have equaled total receipts for all of 2008, he added. "I think this store would have ultimately closed anyway."

Rex was known for being the last supplier in town with available products in July 2007 when an extended heat wave sent Flathead Valley residents scrambling for air conditioners.

A similar scenario played out during the wildland fires of 2003, when poor air quality prompted another push for indoor air conditioning.

About half the store's inventory was in televisions, Brummett said, and the other half in household appliances such as washers, dryers, dishwashers, freezers and air conditioners.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com