CompUSA Opens New Pembroke Pines Store
Posted August 17th, 2009
All-New Store Fully Retail 2.0-Enabled From Day One
CompUSA announced the opening of its newest retail location in the greater Miami area, bringing its total number of Florida locations to 16. From day one the store is fully wired for Retail 2.0, bringing shoppers the best of bricks and mortar and online shopping.
“Our opening of the new Pembroke Pines location is a reflection of overwhelming demand from our Floridian customers,” said Gilbert Fiorentino, Chief Executive of the Technology Products Group at Systemax Inc, parent company of CompUSA. “The Pembroke Pines outlet is the first CompUSA store to be Retail 2.0-enabled from day one, in the spirit of providing more South Florida computer and electronics shoppers with an in-store experience not available anywhere else, with unbeatable prices to boot.” Continue »
CompUSA Helps Out Overtown Youth Center
Posted August 6th, 2009
The Overtown Youth Center is a Miami facility which was founded by the Alonzo Mourning Charities to provide disadvantaged youth with ongoing support and leadership to help build a brighter tomorrow. CompUSA was happy to donate 350 USB Flash Drives to the Youth Center for their Back-To-School project – and we were there to further help with the packing of the bookbags with the flash drives, pencils and other needed supplies for the upcoming school year.
ComputerTV hostesses spoke with the students and several volunteers at the Center and talked a little bit of tech with them too! Last year, CompUSA assisted the Latinos Unidos Center in Miami with a project, there providing 25 computer systems for the Center to aid in their educational efforts as many of these students do not have computers at home. The donated flash drives will provide a “transport” means to get homework from school and to the Overtown Youth Center, where the children can use on-site computers and printers to complete their homework and research. Continue »
Retail 2.0 strategy: Dealerscope Aug 2009
Posted August 5th, 2009
You know you’re onto something when you outline your vision for a whole new retailing experience and 20 minutes later the country’s chief technology officer tells a crowd he wants to use portions of it to improve government services.
That’s what happened after Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive of Systemax’s Technology Products Group, which includes CompUSA, TigerDirect, Circuit City and several other businesses, gave a presentation on his Retail 2.0 strategy during the recent CEA Line Shows.
In a nutshell, the Retail 2.0 concept is about bringing the e-commerce tools and innovations Fiorentino implemented while heading up TigerDirect.com to CompUSA’s brick-and-mortar stores. Continue »
Retail 2.0 Featured in Internet Retailer Article
Posted August 2nd, 2009
Digital merchandising is busting out of the box, bringing web-based content to the store shelf
By Mary Wagner
When Systemax Technology Group CEO Gilbert Fiorentino first walked the aisles of CompUSA stores to learn more about the computer and consumer electronics retailer that Systemax Inc. had acquired in March 2008, he was struck by two things. A host of TV screens and computer monitors displayed pretty pictures or sat empty. And when sales associates were stumped by customers’ product questions, they often found answers using a web-linked computer accessible to staff.
Fiorentino knew customers were accustomed to finding the information they wanted themselves using the web on their own PCs. “These screens were sitting there and I thought, why can’t we get them connected to the Internet?” he wondered. Continue »
CompUSA Rock Your Quad Tour reported in Dealerscope
Posted July 15th, 2009
CompUSA is on the leading edge of finding new and interesting ways to educate, create excitement and even provide some entertainment within our retail stores. Our most recent promotion is the ‘Rock Your Quad Tour,’ featuring the cast of ComputerTV who travel in a 42 foot wrapped RV visiting 13 CompUSA retail stores in Florida in 14 days. Continue »
CompUSA Joins Family Separated by War for Birth
Posted July 2nd, 2009
CompUSA, along with HP and CA, make a families life a little bit better. With a husband in the military and on deployment to Afghanistan, one South Florida woman was going to be alone at the time of her son’s birth – but not any longer. Today, CompUSA provided Venesia with 2 HP laptops, complete with webcams, which will allow her and her husband to be “virtually” connected at the time of their childs birth, via Skype.
Venesia was presented with the laptops, some diapers, and a $10,000 Savings Bond courtesy of CA and CompUSA to kick-start a savings fund for the unborn child’s education. Continue »
CR Electronics: Why electronics stores “suck”
Posted June 28th, 2009
The shopping experience at walk-in electronics stores “sucks,” according to a keynote speech at the recent Consumer Electronics Association conference in New York.
No, that messenger wasn’t me or someone else from Consumer Reports, talking about how our Ratings of places to buy computers and other major electronics items reveal that satisfaction with brick-and-mortar stores lags behind that for online retailers.
Instead, the observation came from someone with firsthand knowledge of electronics retailing: The relatively-new owner of CompUSA’s stores and Web site and of the TigerDirect.com and newly-relaunched CircuitCity.com Web sites, too. Continue »
Dealerscope: Retail 2.0 at Digital Downtown
Posted June 12th, 2009
Gilbert Fiorentino, chief executive of Systemax’s Technology Products Group, has more than a few strong opinions about brick-and-mortar and Internet retailing. And he knows whereof he speaks, as a principal in the company that bought the remains of CompUSA last year and Circuit City this year and has created a new retail model that leverages the strong points of both selling formats.
He has implemented his model, called “Retail 2.0,” online and in 29 retail storefronts of CompUSA and is two weeks into the acquisition of Circuit City’s brand name and the relaunch of its web site. “We’re already #9 in computers and electronics sales, and for the combined sales of CompUSA, Circuit City and TigerDirect.com, we’re #3,” he told an audience at a CEA Line Shows session Thursday. Continue »
TWICE: Digital Downtown
Posted June 12th, 2009
…Systemax is looking to grow its brick-and-mortar business from its current base of 29 CompUSA-branded stores. “We’re looking at additional real estate,” he said. “It’s an opportunity of a lifetime.”
Fiorentino wouldn’t say how many storefronts or markets the company is considering, stating only, “I dream about lots of stores.”
Systemax acquired 16 CompUSA stores in 2008 and recently converted its existing 11 TigerDirect locations to the CompUSA nameplate. The company is also converting its entire store base to its new Retail 2.0 model, which provides Web access and unique descriptive content to all display TVs, computers and monitors. Remodeled stores have seen a 20 percent increase in conversion rates, he told an audience at a Consumer Electronics Association Line Shows event here last week, and the changeover should be completed by late summer. Continue »
BusinessWeek: How CompUSA Made a Comeback
Posted May 13th, 2009
…CompUSA’s new owner is turning the stores into Internet entrance ramps. PC and television monitors not only display eye-catching clips, as they do in most retail chains; each points as well to the device’s product page on the compusa.com Web site. Shoppers can also check store inventories and even browse competitors’ sites to compare prices. “We want to give people the rich experience of buying online,” says Gilbert Fiorentino, who heads the chain’s retail strategy.
…So Gilbert Fiorentino… turned to making better use of existing assets. He had in-house programmers write software linking computer monitors to each store’s inventory database. TVs were hooked up to hard drives and equipped with keyboards to make them Net-accessible, too. … The chain, which now has 24 sites, mostly in Florida and Illinois, plans to update every one this year. Continue »
