CompUSA to Open Houston Store, Parent Systemax Confirms

CompUSA is “aggressively trying” to open a store in the Village Plaza at Bunker Hill retail center near Houston in time for the holiday season, Tami Pearson, a real estate broker representing CompUSA, told a local newspaper. CompUSA did sign a lease for the Houston store, but hasn’t set an opening date, the Systemax spokesman said. The chain “likes the Houston market and believes it could support additional stores,” the spokesman said.

Technology Products CEO Gilbert Fiorentino told us in an interview Tuesday that Systemax also is “looking at” some former Circuit City locations as it weighs expansion plans. Systemax is focusing on 18,000-square-foot locations for CompUSA, though the West Kendall store - a former Sound Advice outlet - measures 15,000 square feet, Fiorentino said. Systemax changed the name on its U.S. Tiger Direct stores to CompUSA and has 27 locations. In Canada, Systemax is considering adding the CompUSA name to its five Tiger Direct locations in the Toronto area, Fiorentino said. “When you go into markets, you have to put in enough stores so the advertising works,” Fiorentino said. For CompUSA, that typically requires four or five locations, Fiorentino said.

The CompUSA expansion plans come as the chain continues to roll out the Retail 2.0 store format, with all but four locations expected to have it in place by year-end, Fiorentino said. The four stores that won’t conform to the Retail 2.0 model have leases that are up for renewal, he said. Systemax launched Retail 2.0 in October 2008, featuring 300 Internet-connected PCs that offered a home page for each product, complete with specs and features.

The Retail 2.0 concept has since been upgraded to include “waterfall” displays for digital cameras and camcorders, cellphones and GPS devices, Fiorentino said. There are nine or 10 such displays in the stores, each featuring about 15 products, he said. The products are tethered to a touch-screen LCD that automatically displays product specs and features once the device is lifted off a pedestal. In addition to product data, the differences between LCD and plasma technology and 120 Hz and 240 Hz frame rates are described, Fiorentino said. There also are separate buttons on the touch screen that can link to the CompUSA web site or page a store staffer for additional help, he said. CompUSA also has deployed two 32-inch touch-screen LCDs on some endcaps to highlight certain products. Flat- panel TV wall-mount supplier Sanus also has been promoted in a 25-inch touch-screen LCD that designed as a “configurator” to match a set with the proper mount, Fiorentino said.

The turnaround for installing Retail 2.0 in existing locations is about five weeks, said Fiorentino, who declined to disclose the average cost. The product information is created at Systemax’s Port Washington, N.Y., headquarters and transmitted to stores where it’s stored on cache servers, Fiorentino said. Systemax has two employees that update and maintain product data, he said.

In addition to Retail 2.0, Systemax is working to differentiate its CircuitCity, CompUSA and TigerDirect Web sites. Nestor Suarez was appointed as a separate webmaster for CircuitCity.com, which has more small appliances, GPS products, Blu-ray, DVD and CD titles than the other sites, Fiorentino said. Systemax recently hired Baker and Taylor to supply CircuitCity. com with DVDs, Blu-ray and CD titles, he said. CircuitCity.com is averaging more than one million visitors per week, up from 900,000 in Q2 (CED Aug 13 p6), Fiorentino said. TigerDirect.com, which carries more PC parts and components, averages about 2.5 million visitors per week, he said. Systemax bought bankrupt Circuit City’s Internet assets in May for $14 million, a purchase that included a customer data based containing 40 million names and 14 million email addresses, Fiorentino said.

“If you want to understand your customer, an all-in-one approach doesn’t make any sense because they are very, very different customers,” Fiorentino said. “What we try to do is merchandise different products on different sites at different times. If they all were exactly the same it wouldn’t make any sense.”

In CompUSA stores, the focus has been on selling some higher-end TVs such as Samsung’s LED-backlit LCD TV models, step-up notebook PCs, security cameras and PC accessories, Fiorentino said. TVs typically account for slightly more than 15 percent of CompUSA revenue, he said. CompUSA recently moved netbooks to a separate end cap display to distinguish them from standard notebook PCs, which tend to contain more memory, hard drive capacity and faster processors.

CompUSA dropped videogame consoles about four months ago, but continues to carry PC game titles, Fiorentino said. “We tried carrying them but in the long run we would rather bring a small business customer into our store or someone who wants to buy parts and components or knows we have 110 memory SKUs,” Fiorentino said. “You have to give up some markets and we thought the console game market was better serviced by the current distribution models and we would be better off devoting our time and effort to a place where we could do a better job than the next guy.” - Mark Seavy