Well, Hastings is down for the count and I doubt it’ll get back up. The company claims competition from online retailers for it’s demise, and while it’s true that the web has caused many bricks and mortar retailers a world of hurt, many still survive, and profitably too. Warren Buffett once said, “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."
However, Hastings has been good for small cities around the Southwest and it will be missed. Hastings had books, movies, music, comic books, and games galore, important when you consider that in many of its small-town locations, the internet disappears with the sidewalks, leaving ranch families with little in the way of electronic media. It may be hard for people who live in large cities to believe, but people in rural areas still buy a lot of CD’s and DVD’s, there’s no other option. Add books to the mix, and Hastings was an important cultural resource, a pop-culture resource, but a resource nonetheless.
The worst thing will be all those lost jobs (my own position was eliminated last month), but in the end, we'll all be a little poorer without Hastings.
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