Hard-Off stores that close and reopen as Mode-Off!!

Ever had this happen to you? You roam around your region hitting various Hard-Off stores you've been to before, but they've either up and left, or been "renovated" as a Super Book-Off or Mode-Off (ie: no more gaming & junk hardware)!

It's happened to me three times already. The closest Off-House to me reopened as fashions & books only, meaning we have to travel 1 hr to get cheap baby toys, strollers etc. Not to mention the walks I used to take to some nearby shops, only to discover to my shock that it's all CDs, DVDs, and fashion magazines.

Please share your stories.

Of course, I understand the economic rationale of it, kind of: brand-name fashions, bags, and jewellery make a far better profit per sale than some "junk" PC cables, but it still pisses me off. I lay the blame more on Hard-Off's location strategy, where shops are too remote for casual browsing. Moving shops closer to train stations would be a better solution than simply rebranding their stores.

What do you think?

 

I wish we had some sort of Hard-Off stores here in Brazil. Anyway, have you tried talking to any of the store staff?

I guess old electronics stuff aren't just profitable anymore, specially in Japan. Maybe they should just create a "Game-Off" store for just videogames/computers/arcades stuff?

 

My local Hard Off moved to a new location due to the main shopping center it was near also relocating. The new store became a Hard Off, Hobby Off and some other Off store that sells clothes and jewellery. It's now 3 shops in one which means it's actually smaller even though the main building is bigger. A real shame because a lot of stuff has gone but thankfully the games stuff is just as plentifully as it always was.

 

It's funny but until this thread I never caught the meaning behind the name Hard-Off. I figured it was just another quirky Japanese name that made no sense like Super Potato.

 

Dude, I went to the movies yesterday and saw a preview for an upcoming movie called Wood Job.

:-/

 

There needs to be more stores like this around Australia, we happened to get Daiso though lol.

 

At least the replacement stores didn't become Hard-Ons =)

I think the origin is yet another Japanese portmanteau of English words, like Pokemon = pocket monsters, from poketto monsuta-. The problem is semantic drift - Japanese often imported English words in one very specific sense that we consider specialized in English. "Hard" presumably means "hardware", but the semantic drift has caused it to mean computer hardware, whereas a "hardware store" in (American?) English means stores like Ace, Crown, Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. I believe that the "Off" is a more severe semantic drift, copying "off" from expressions like "50% Off".

Thus, a translation of the store name "Hard-Off" to English would be "Discount Computer Hardware", if my memory on this is correct.

 

It happens on a regular basis, they obviously like to follow sales trends quickly and swap stores around. I created a map of all the OFF stores in Japan, and the first time i used it a few stores had changed. I've had it happen within a month of adding a store to my map and it's gone, it's very annoying when you have gone well out of your way for it to be a wasted trip. I now have the habit of double checking on the main website before i go to any.