The sudden closure of the Howard’s Appliance chain is another sign of the new reality of how Californians buy big-ticket items that fill their homes.
Most shoppers no longer seek out these goods at modest specialty merchants like Howard’s in Southern California or anywhere else. Rather, consumers primarily go to three big-box merchants: Lowe’s, Home Depot or Best Buy.
In the wake of this evolution in shoppers’ preferences – not to mention the turmoil of the pandemic era – Howard’s, with a legacy dating back 79 years, joins California’s long list of appliance/electronics shops to reach the retail graveyard.
Remember last year’s collapse of the Pirch chain from San Diego? Or the demise of the seemingly ubiquitous Fry’s? Or the end of Western Appliances from San Jose or Asien Appliance in Santa Rosa?
And it’s not just California: multistate retailers such as HH Gregg, Conn’s, and National Freight also shuttered during the past decade.
Basically, today’s consumer shops for appliances and electronics largely based on pricing. The hand-holding that a regional chain or mom-and-pop store might offer has lost most of its value. That’s why retail giants succeeded.
Trying to add heft by buying up smaller competitors, Howard’s did, wasn’t a cure. And the high-end slice of this shopping niche – something Howard’s also toyed with before its demise – is a limited, economically sensitive segment that’s extremely tough to master.
Then came 2025’s skittish consumer and tariff-linked headaches – two problems Howard’s cited as its reasons for closing its doors and a bankruptcy filing.
It all adds up to one measure of industry distress: the number of California workers in appliance/electronics stores has been cut in half in 25 years.
Shrinking staffs
It’s nothing new. Appliance and electronics shops have been on a death knell well before the pandemic era’s cruel twists essentially made them a footnote in shopping history.
Ponder what my trusty spreadsheet discovered about this shrinking slice of retailing. These merchants have been trimming staff for the past quarter-century.
The industry’s peak employment was in the 1999 holiday season, at 94,000 – up 44% in a decade. It was a time when dot-com mania was fueling demand for household computing electronics. Homebuying – an appliance sales driver – was bubbling out of its 1990s malaise into that early 2000s firestorm.
By mid-2019, before the coronavirus upheaval, shoppers’ evolving demand translated to California’s appliance/electronics jobs dropping to 60,000. That’s a loss of roughly one-third of staff.
Then came the pandemic.
Appliance/electronics employment plummeted 13% to 52,000 from 2019 to 2022. It fell another 15% to 44,000 as of June 2025.
Look, it’s been tough for any store operator lately, as online shopping has become a mainstream option, and huge chains have gobbled up market share among shoppers who prefer in-person shopping.
Overall, California’s retail jobs dropped 1% in the 2019-22 pandemic era and 2% more in the past three years.
Slumping sales
Consider the appliances/electronics challenge through the lens of a federal measurement of California in-store retail sales.
A small appliance/electronics chain isn’t just battling behemoths. It’s battling for a meekly growing slice of consumer spending.
In mid-2019, before the coronavirus upended the shopping world, California’s appliance/electronics sales were dropping at a 1.2% annual rate. At the same moment, sales at all stores statewide were up 1.6%. So you see the direction.
And curiously, the pandemic’s initial shopping changes may have momentarily extended the viability of appliance/electronics stores.
Californians sought larger living spaces, which required more furnishings – including appliances and electronics. And when supply-chain challenges thinned store inventories, consumer hand-holding became more desirable for a brief time. Relatively speaking, though, it was a minor bump.
Amid all the turbulence, stimulus checks and inflation, shopping at stores across California grew by 20% over three years.
California home sales – with buyers eager to refurbish their new residence with new appliances and/or electronics – jumped 24% statewide. Yet appliance/electronics sales statewide rose by 2%. Up, but barely.
Then the economy returned to a new normal. That included the end of cheap interest rates that had overheated consumer prices and a key force behind appliance sales, homebuying. Home sales statewide have tumbled 35% in the past three years.
After June 2022, appliance and electronics sales dropped by 3% over the next three years. Meanwhile, all California stores saw their cash registers ring up 6% more sales.
Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com