jdm_rsx

found this on FH

http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/...0172964538.html

frofro24

Sucks for them, I can't believe they have already closed 120+ stores over the last year..

Wonder who will buy their buildings and what they will become?

skanktwo

lol. thats funny. they just put up a new compusa in pearl highlands. now they gotta close.

Hyper-X

This doesn't come as any big surprise to me. I used to work at Byteware for 6 years as a technician and we all used to follow everything "behind the scenes" and we predicted this would happen, in fact many of the other big stores like Circuit City and Best Buy will follow eventually. Sony Hawaii is also hurting really bad, I know for a fact that this is the 4th year that they didn't make their goals by a longshot.

The electronics/computer market is only beneficial to 2 parties, the customer and the product manufacturer. The people in between are often screwed due to inconsistencies regarding price protection and lack of unilateral pricing. How many times did you seek help from a store that had knowledgeable staff but ended up buying the item(s) somewhere else? I know of many people that used to come seek my personal help, take up hours of my time only to find their forum post stating how they decided to buy it online because it's cheaper. Computers and electronics is all about who low balls the other... it's that simple and being in Hawaii doesn't exactly help that issue since we can't match the mainland pricing due to higher processing costs and shipping overseas. People used to accuse us of being overpriced on the RAM (compared to newegg/pricewatch) but what people don't know is we made $2 profit on each stick of memory. Our cost was already higher than newegg's marked up price and we couldn't stay in business selling everything at cost. It was a no-win scenario.

CompUSA fell victim to the "oh I'll check out the stuff there but I'll buy it off ebay/ubid/newegg because it's cheaper" kind of customers just as much as we did, it was inevitable. Customer loyalty doesn't exist much in this industry. It's really sad because I miss the kind of knowledgeable staff that used to work at places like Honolulu Audio Video, nobody on this island could compare to those guys in the home audio game, yet even they couldn't survive the price games people played.

mister x

Evolve or die.

Hyper-X

Computer retail stores have little need to be in Hawaii. In the end almost everyone that's in this business falls prey to their customers buying stuff online. If you have someone here locally that's able to price match newegg.com for example, either that person stole the item, is selling it to you 2nd hand/damaged/used or has no intention on making profit. There's always room for doing business at the service level in Hawaii but you're taking a huge risk to get involved in the retail sales side of things.

istdercollen

I thought the whole thing was to make money on warranties and all the small items like hdmi cables and blank DVDs etc. I have a friend who works for a local electronics store back in Nashville.. And there is no real way for them to compete with big Box stores or online but they did 150000 dollars on black Friday out of a 10000 square foot store. I think there is still loyalty out there. But like you said maybe not in Hawaii.

Hyper-X

Yeah, it's much easier to do that kind of business on the mainland, even if you don't factor in the difference in the price of dirt for where you do business on.

Ingram Micro is the main supplier for everyone... Fry's, Byteware/Puredigital, CompUSA, Best Buy, etc. If you want to buy Intel/AMD/MSI/Epox/Abit/Asus/Quantum/Seagate/DFI/Plextor/Logitech/Microsoft/Antec/SuperMicro/whatever, you go through them. That's as close as you'll ever get to the manufacturer. I still have access to them via my current corporate account so I know what exact cost is on just about everything. Newegg.com is Ingram Micro's online distribution for retail customers. The real stupid thing is Ingram has it setup where if you do 10k worth of business with them per year, shipping to you (via UPS ground) is free for 48 states. If you do over 1-2 million with Ingram from Hawaii, there's no free shipping to us, absolutely none, not even a small price break on the items to compensate. The most they'll do is send you manufacturer coupons to redeem some cash for example if you sell 10 copies of Windows Vista, you get $10 off your next box of 10 Windows Vista (not $10 per copy, $10 total). Oh I forgot to add that the coupons don't apply to Hawaii and Alaska since it costs more than $10 to ship.

If prices suddenly drop, Ingram Micro protects sellers in the 48 states by offering free shipping back to them (you have to turn in the old merchandise) and get the same stuff back (different batch) to sell at a reduced cost. For Hawaii, you have to pay to send the items back to them and back to you, meaning you eat all the shipping and are condemned to sell it for negligible profit. If you decide not to send them back, you fall victim to looking like you're trying to rip everyone off locally since you can't match online prices.

This is why big computer stores that have any desire to expand/grow has to deal in other things (like home entertainment products) just to stay in business. Byteware couldn't do it with the most knowledgeable staff, CompUSA couldn't do it with mainland corporate backing with a larger diverse inventory... nobody in Hawaii can do it unless manufacturers step in, which they won't.

Hyper-X

I recall when I used to work for Bose Factory Store Waikele, the factory store concept was Bose's first real venture into the retail market. Until then it was all phone orders from ads you'd find in audiophile magazines. Bose Kapiolani was Dr. Amar Bose's test store, that's where he tried all sorts of things to find out how it'd pan out if he decided to have Bose stores throughout the USA. The factory stores focused on "factory renewed" products.

Bose IMO did a very good job with their research prior to entering the retail environment, they had incredibly well-designed sales training that was leaps and bounds better than anything out there at the time, considering they came in with hardly no retail experience. What they didn't do well was when the company decided to create something to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. They introduced the DMG (direct marketing group) that had no affiliation with the retail stores but operated directly from the manufacturing side of the company straight into the hands of the customers bypassing everything in the middle. When magazine ads from the DMG presented "brand new" products for the same price as "factory renewed" products sold in the factory stores but with free shipping to you, guess what happened to the factory stores soon after.