CompUSA is back — with an Internet-linked, in-store system that gives customers instant product information, including videos, and then allows them to compare prices charged by rivals.

The chain opened a new store in Euless in February and plans another in about a month in Arlington near Interstate 20 and Cooper Street.

It’s been a choppy ride for the 26-year-old consumer electronics retailer. Once known as Software Warehouse, it went public in 1991, acquired Tandy Corp.’s Computer City chain 12 years ago and then took over California-based The Good Guys chain in 2003.

But it struggled to make profits as fierce competition ate into margins. Not even Mexico’s renowned investor Carlos Slim — Forbes magazine’s richest man in the world — could salvage the ailing chain after investing over $3 billion.

Systemax, a publicly traded Long Island-based company that owns TigerDirect.com, an online electronics retailer, bought the CompUSA brand and 16 stores, including ones in Plano and El Paso, in early 2008 from a liquidator. Just the year before, CompUSA had operated 229 outlets nationally and employed 1,500 in North Texas alone. Read the rest of this entry »