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March 17, 2009
Where are you buying electronics?
Consumer Electronics retailing is a tough way to make a buck. I have been in the CE industry for over 20 years and have seen many once successful retail companies go out of business.
In the late 1980's I worked for The Federated Group, it was a chain of about 60 stores in California and Texas. In a couple of years it went from being one of the most successful retailers of electronics to being liquidated. Other now defunct CE retailers include:
- Highland Appliance,
- CMC,
- Tweeter
- The Good Guys!,
- Nobody Beats the Wiz,
- Silo,
- CompUSA,
- Lechmere,
- Rex TV and Appliance,
- Crazy Eddie,
- Pacific Stereo,
Early this year Circuit City went bankrupt; closing 567 stores and laying off over 30,000 employees. Did they make some mistakes along the way? Sure, but maybe its a symptom of a change in the way that people buy consumer electronics and other products.
This is not a scientific polls, but many of my friends have recently purchased new televisions, computers and other products. Did most of them buy them at Circuit City? No. Best Buy? No. The majority of my friends purchased their new toys from big box discount stores (WalMart, Target) clubs (Sam's Club, Costco, BJ's Wholesale) or from internet merchants (Amazon, Buy, and Tiger Direct).
These merchants offer great brands at aggressive prices and if you buy online, sometimes you don't have to pay sales tax. And many CE products, particularly televisions, are now much easier to ship, they are less bulky and weigh less than old tube televisions.
My recent CE purchases have been from Costco, Tiger Direct and Amazon. Where are your buying your consumer electronics?
Posted by Bob Gatton at March 17, 2009 7:35 AM
Comments
I only buy electronics online. One site you might want to check out is
www.valueelectronics.com
I have bought several things from them and have been happy with the price and the service. They are much smaller than Amazon and some of the others, but if you have a question you can call them up and actually talk to someone that knows what they are doing.
Posted by: FrankT at March 22, 2009 6:38 PM
I have bought both from Costco and a small independent Sony Dealer in the last few months. I found that the indy dealer who has been around a long time and uses well recognized (stable) third party extended warranty and finance partners, to provide the best bang for the buck. While he may have had higher prices in other economic times, he now doesn't have the high overhead of a national chain and can be lower in price. Plus you get to deal with someone who generally loves what they do and really knows the products they sell as opposed to the big box stores where quite often I know more details about a range of products then they do.
As far as the Costco purchase it was more of an impulse purchase that I had specific size and feature requirments and a Samsung product fit the bill perfectly at an attractive price.
Posted by: Grant T at March 25, 2009 8:57 AM
I too am a fan of valueelectronics.com. I haven't purchased anything from them recently, but they have great prices and service.
Posted by: FrankT at May 12, 2009 11:08 AM
You have to be careful when buying electronics online. It is easy to buy a product from someone who is not an authorized dealer. It may sound good at first, and the prices are hard to beat, but when service or tech support is needed, they are both non existent. With local A/V companies, you get top of the line warranty service, along with the benefit of talking with a real person any time something goes wrong (no matter how simple). A good relationship with a reputable (and local)company can go a long way when you are dealing with items as fickle as electronics.
Posted by: C at July 15, 2009 1:56 PM
