Just saw before I came here .Very sad but Effingers, in a sense, cooked their own goose (may have also have been a victim of less spending after the Wall Street meltdown.
Major problems:
1) Price. With the exceptions of closeouts Effingers' prices were incessantly high. That was ok for some of the wealthy in the area but I usually found stuff cheaper elsewhere after the advent of box stores and the internet.
clothing-Kohls was always much cheaper with "Kohls cash"
camping equipment (late in game for me)-Walmart cheaper
Running shoes-unless one lucked out (small window) always much cheaper on Internet. In fact (also see below) 70% of the time I'd try something on at Effinger's and purchase on the Internet.
winter clothing-Flemington Department Store, Kohls and even Walmart (right now I'm wearing an $11 pullover 90%+ cotton 9rare nowadays) I bought at Walmart pre opening game last year.
scouting-Flemington dept store had a much bigger section
2) Inventory-As above I did sometimes feel guilty (in later years I visited Effingers less often and barely looked at their clothing due to high price) and wanted to buy my Asics Gel Kayanos there. 80%-90% of the time Effingers was out of my size. The 1-2 times in the past 5+ years they had my size it was for the more expensive, newer model (and I ordered the older, much cheaper version online). If they had the same model I wanted, it was always $20-$30 more expensive (sorry but have had trouble in job market before my sister's theft/house sale/foreclosure and Effingers isn't the R Fund). The one time I was offered a discount or matching price I did purchase from Effingers. Ditto the once I had a coupon. Also, unlike the box stores could Effingers have helped themselves by carrying lots of wides but didn't do that.
As I offered a few months ago in a well "liked" thread, the Kayanos don't change much so for many years I've ordered online from either RNJsports.com (just ordered a tough to get previous model (22s) for $99.95 w free shipping), Holabirdsports.com and even ebay.
3) Couponing-rarely did Effingers offer coupons. During the past few years ran several Google searches for Groupon, etc but NEVER found an Effingers coupon online (occasionally one was sent to my home or email).
Effingers was a fun store in its day. Frankly I remember on the way back from my best late day Springsteen show in Hershey (back in May 2009 with Piscataway Mike and (Happy birthday) Brother Tom I was able to convince the brothers to stop for lunch/dinner on the way to the Allentown OTB (where I hit the exacta on the Preakness
and an Iron Pigs game and fireworks (we were one of 5 rows in the stadum not drenched by a bad storm).
We stopped at Cracker Barrel for a yummy meal and Cabelas (on I-78) was next door. I was FLOORED by the size fish tanks (like a mini aquarium) let alone the massive selection-esp with hunting and guns (even had a shooting range like they "used to" on the boardwalks). I bought a nice washable cabelas gym bag (replaced once since 2009 if that) I couldn't find elsewhere (if I ever reordered their website was top notch). I thought to myself inside (maybe even verbally spoke to Mike) that Cabelas dwarfs Effingers-and that if cab elas or similar came in near Effingers, the later would be in trouble. In recent years there was Dicks, Modells, Sports Authority (RIP),and even Walmart.
