CompUSA Attempts to Fuse E-tail and Retail to Reboot Itself

Now that the CompUSA brand has been bought for $30M by Systemax, Compusa is going to try to reinvent itself by adding online shopping elements into a brick and mortar store. Systemax is the company behind Tiger Direct. Thinking that the customer experience for electronics store is “underwhelming” (and we agree), Gilbert Fiorentino, the CompUSA CEO decide to embark in “Retail 2.0″.

The idea is to make the store more interactive by adding big displays across the store (300 per store), where customers could see more information about the products. There are also plans for using the displays for advertising when no-one is using them. CompUSA thinks that this will also reduce the need for store associates. This is an interesting experiment, that could work well if implemented properly. It will be interesting to see if less savvy customers will miss the “human element”.