How can brick-and-mortar consumer electronics stores serve customers better? Let Gilbert Fiorentino, an executive at Systemax (which now owns the Circuit City brand name), count the ways.
[
Photo courtesy of
Ed Yourdon (Under
Creative Commons) ]
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 (available to subscribers) 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.
In the most colorful presentation at the CEA Line Shows event, Gilbert Fiorentino, the Chief Executive (Technology Products Group) of Systemax, the parent company for CompUSA, said he took over the ailing chain last year determined to improve the experience of shopping for electronics in a store.
"Go into a typical electronics store," he says, "and can you see the product manual? No. Can you find out how many HDMI inputs the TV set has? No, not unless it's on the little card on the shelf in front—and someone hasn't taken that for themselves. Can I even use the TV? No, someone stole the remote control, too."
At revamped CompUSA stores, products on display are linked to nearby flat-panel displays that show additional information about the model that is picked up. Click to enlarge.
[ Photo courtesy of Systemax ]
A key problem, Fiorentino said, is that stores all but ignore the Web—the primary source of consumer electronics information. "Half the time, the salesman has to go into the manager's office or something to get onto the Web and check something for you. That's crazy."
Fiorentino highlighted a paradox in electronics retailing: Most buyers research online, in part at retail Web sites that offer a rich mix of user reviews, videos, and detailed specs. Yet the overwhelming majority of sales are still made in brick-and-mortar stores—dismal as those mostly are. ("People love to see stuff, and try it out, before they buy.")
The walk-in electronics store will endure, Fiorentino predicts, but only if it changes with the times, and fast.
CompUSA is now revamping its stores—now numbering 24, most of them in Florida—to bridge what he calls the "chasm" between Web and brick-and-mortar. For example, stores will give every TV set its own feed, continually showing HD demos and model information.
Another pledge: the same prices in CompUSA stores and on its website. (Higher store prices may have hurt Circuit City, which pledged to match their own online prices in ads aired shortly before the chain's demise.) And Fiorentino says if you can't find what you want in the store, but the store's website has it, he's working towards easy ways to order the item in the store, with free shipping to your home.
Given the changes at CompUSA, we'll be curious to see if the chain fares better with
subscribers in our 2009 survey of electronics retailers, which we'll publish later in the year. In past years, CompUSA has ranked towards the bottom of the Ratings of stores, along with most of the other major national chains.
What do you think? Weigh in with your observations on CompUSA's plans, or on the state of electronics retail stores. —Paul Reynolds
