Once a part of the three big electronics retail outlets prior to filing bankruptcy two years ago, CompUSA has reopened their doors with about 30 new stores nationwide and a slew of fresh marketing strategies to boot. Some of those new strategies include aggressive pricing, remodeled stores with improved lighting and most intriguingly, unrestricted in-store Internet access to stimulate comparison shopping.
Despite the increasing trend of purchasing discounted electronics and other goods online, founder of TigerDirect - now CompUSA sister store, also owned by Systemax - Gilbert Fiorentino feels very strongly about customers still wanting to have a physical store to purchase electronics.
Naturally, one would immediately surmise that a physical chain cannot maintain prices that compare to major e-tailers, however, given the current model, CompUSA is expected to carry price tags identical to those on TigerDirect.com regardless of the obvious rise in overhead. In combination with that and the in-store Internet access, it is safe to assume that prices will be set very competitively given the ease of finding an alternate distributor.
CompUSA is paying close attention to managing its costs in order to survive the recession and have a future in the market, which is now a hopeful outlook with competition such as Circuit City going under.