David Sprosty, Systemax’s Chief Executive of the North American Technology Products Group, commented, “On behalf of our Board of Directors and employees, I’d like to welcome Jed Stillman, Michael Amkreutz and Michael Jones to Systemax and the North American Technology Products Group (“NATPG”). All are experienced executives and proven leaders with strong backgrounds in their respective fields. They will be tremendous assets to our team as we execute on our goal to improve the experience for our SMB, retail and online customers.”

Jed Stillman has joined the Company as Executive Vice President of Strategy and Services. In this new role, he will be responsible for strategic planning and will work closely with the rest of the leadership team to build Systemax’s services and applications business. Jed brings with him a wealth of education and experience in driving strategic growth and new business opportunities. Most recently, Jed was Vice President and General Manager at Best Buy, where he led the Best Buy Connect business and subscription services business. Prior to that, Jed was the President and COO for specialty retailer Seasonal Concepts. Earlier in his career, Jed worked for Clark Bardes Consulting, Delolitte & Touche and Ernst & Young. He received an M.B.A. in Business Policy & Strategic Management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.S. in Management from the University of Minnesota.

Michael Amkreutz, appointed Executive Vice President of Merchandising, will be leading the strategic direction of the merchandising function for all channels within the NATPG. Michael has extensive experience within merchandising, marketing and product planning. Most recently, Michael was Vice President of Merchandising for Sears Holdings Corp., responsible for online merchandising, and before that he was Vice President of Product Management at Newegg.com. Additionally, he has worked in the consumer electronics field on the manufacturing side for Hannspree, Hanns.G and Sharp Electronics, where he worked with Systemax as a vendor partner. Michael received a B.A. in Business & Marketing from Western Washington University and a B.S. in Mathematics from Rutgers University.

Michael Jones joins Systemax as Chief Information Officer, accountable for the leadership and strategic direction of the information technology teams for the NATPG. Michael is a seasoned IT executive and most recently was the CIO for Michael’s Stores where he significantly contributed to revenue generation through the implementation of a CRM database. He was also responsible for redesigning Michaels.com as well as applying new financial and workforce management systems. He began his career at Kmart, where he led the execution of a new logistics management system as well as an integrated e-Commerce site with in-store systems to maximize the multi-channel strategy. Michael received an M.B.A. and a B.S. in Economics from the University at Albany.

About Systemax Inc.

Systemax Inc. (http://www.systemax.com), a Fortune 1000 company, sells personal computers, computer components and supplies, consumer electronics and industrial products through a system of branded e-Commerce websites, retail stores, relationship marketers and direct mail catalogs in North America and Europe. The primary brands are TigerDirect, CompUSA, Circuit City, MISCO, WStore and Global Industrial.

NOOK devices are the perfect choice for anyone who wants access to their favorite reads anywhere they go. Customers seeking a simple, easy-to-use, dedicated reading experience will love the NOOK Simple Touch Reader, an ultra-light, portable 6-inch eReader with the most-advanced E Ink® Pearl display and the longest battery life of any eReader. With a simple tap, it’s intuitive and easy to navigate, shop and read.

For customers who love to read everything in rich color, the NOOK Color features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen ideal for reading a wide variety of content including books, enhanced books, immersive children’s picture books, an expansive collection of interactive magazines, newspapers and more. NOOK Color also offers the most-requested tablet features, including high-quality NOOK Apps™, built-in email, and an enhanced Web experience. With all NOOK products, customers gain access to shop Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Bookstore™ of more than two million digital titles, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices.

“Barnes & Noble is happy to offer our best-selling and award-winning line of NOOK eReading devices through TigerDirect and CompUSA,” said Chris Peifer, Vice President, Digital Business Development at Barnes & Noble. “With NOOK, customers will discover the most immersive, fun and easy-to-use reading experience, as well as gain access to a vast selection of popular books, interactive magazines, newspapers, children’s books, apps and more.”

For more information, visit www.bn.com/nook or visit any NOOK Boutique or display in one of Barnes & Noble’s more than 700 bookstores (http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com).

About NOOK™ from Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble’s NOOK brand of eReading products makes it easy to read what you love, anywhere you like™ with a fun, easy-to-use and immersive digital reading experience. With NOOK, customers gain access to Barnes & Noble’s expansive NOOK Bookstore™ of more than two million digital titles, and the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices. The award-winning NOOK Color™ Reader’s Tablet™, the best-value on the tablet market ($249), features a stunning 7-inch VividView™ Color Touchscreen to read all of the content you love, shop popular apps, connect via email, browse the Web and more. The NOOK Simple Touch Reader™ ($139), is the easiest-to-use 6-inch touch reader, with the longest battery life of any eReader. In Barnes & Noble stores, NOOK owners can access free Wi-Fi connectivity, enjoy the Read In Store™ feature to read NOOK Books™ for free, and the More In Store™ program, which offers free, exclusive content and special promotions. Barnes & Noble was the first company to offer digital lending for a wide selection of books through its LendMe® technology, available through NOOK eReading products. Find NOOK devices in Barnes & Noble stores and online at www.BN.com, as well as at Best Buy, Walmart, Staples, Books-A-Million, OfficeMax, Fred Meyer, and P.C. Richard & Son stores.

In addition to NOOK devices, Barnes & Noble makes it easy for customers to enjoy any book, anytime, anywhere with its free line of NOOK software, available at www.bn.com/freenookapps. Customers can use Barnes & Noble’s free eReading software to access and read books from their personal Barnes & Noble digital library on devices including iPad™, iPhone®, iPod touch®, Android™ smartphones and tablets BlackBerry®, PC and Mac®. Lifetime Library™ helps ensure that Barnes & Noble customers will always be able to access their digital libraries on NOOK products and software-enabled devices and BN.com. Barnes & Noble also offers NOOK Study™ (www.nookstudy.com), an innovative study platform and software solution for higher education, NOOK Kids™ (www.nookkids.com), a collection of digital picture and chapter books for children, and NOOK Books en español™ (http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ebooksenespanol), the first-ever Spanish language digital bookstore in the United States.

For more information on NOOK devices and eReading software, updates, new NOOK Book releases, Free Friday™ NOOK Books and more, follow us on www.twitter.com/ebooksbn and www.facebook.com/nookbn.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.
Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 704 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 635 college bookstores serving over 4.6 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through BN.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than two million titles in its NOOK Bookstore™ (www.bn.com/ebooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK™ eReading product offering, customers can buy and read digital books and content on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK devices, partner company products, and the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

NOOK Simple Touch Reader™, NOOK 1st Edition™, NOOK 1st Edition Wi-Fi™, NOOK Color™, Reader’s Tablet™, Fast Page™, NOOK Books™, NOOK Bookstore™, NOOK Newsstand™, NOOK Magazines™, NOOK Newspapers™, NOOK Apps™, PubIt!™, NOOK Kids™, Read In Store™, More In Store™, NOOK Friends™, LendMe®, NOOK Library™, NOOK Boutiques™, The Barnes & Noble Promise™, NOOK Books en español™, NOOK Study™, Free Friday™, Lifetime Library™ and Read What You Love. Anywhere You Like™ are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc. Other trademarks referenced in this release are the property of their respective owners.

Follow Barnes & Noble on Twitter (www.bn.com/twitter), Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/barnesandnoble) and YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/user/bnstudio).

About TigerDirect Inc.

TigerDirect Inc. (http://www.tigerdirect.com) serves the needs of both personal and business computer users, selling consumer electronics, computers, digital media technology and peripherals via catalog, business to business, retail stores and Internet channels. TigerDirect is a subsidiary of Systemax Inc.

About CompUSA

The CompUSA companies (http://www.compusa.com) serve the needs of both personal and business computer users, selling consumer electronics, computers, digital media technology and peripherals via retail stores, business-to-business and Internet channels. The CompUSA companies are subsidiaries of Systemax Inc.

Better than just a bunch of tablets on display, this is a fully Retail 2.0 enabled department which allows you to obtain full product information just by lifting the tablet from the display. Plus, you can get extensive product specifications, read customer reviews, surf the web to obtain even more information or to compare pricing, as well as integrated comparison technology to allow you to compare up to four different tablets side by side.

This new TabletCenter Department will provide shoppers with the same great Retail 2.0 experience as in other departments, but totally tablet-centric!

Check out your local TigerDirect.com or CompUSA Retail Store to see if you have the new TabletCentral and find yourself a great new tablet!

This new location features some new displays that have never been seen in any of our other stores, and innovative TigerDirect features (like retail 2.0) throughout the entire store.

While today is the “soft open” of the new location, feel free to come in and check it out. Watch for a “grand opening” in the near future, and check out some of the pictures of this great new location!

By providing crucial product information available online while shopping in-store, the VEC extends TigerDirect’s and sister chain CompUSA’s Internet-based Retail 2.0 store concept, which allows shoppers to access price and product information — and even browse competitors’ Web sites — from in-store display screens adjacent to the product. AMD and TigerDirect will discuss the VEC and the future of Retail 2.0 during a webcast on Saturday, Aug. 28, at 2:00 p.m. EST at www.retail20.com/amd.

Source: TWICE

To read the full article from the MultiChannel Merchant magazine, click here.

The store is currently in ‘soft open’ mode and will be having a grand opening celebration shortly, once the store is 100% together and ready for prime time.  We are still stocking some shelves and getting used to things, but we didn’t want to make you wait – and simply opened the doors while we get settled in.  Plus, the store is fully outfitted with ‘Retail 2.0’ a all-new concept in retailing that brings the convenience of the Internet right to you inside the retail store. 

You’ll find that the TVs, laptops, desktops and monitors simply ‘call out’ their features as you walk by, plus everything has a keyboard attached, so you can dive in to get full product specifications, manuals, customer reviews and more – plus surf your favorite websites and even compare our prices against other competitors.  Just like at home!

Check it out today!

Systemax at #45 outranks other industry leaders such as hhGregg, PcConnection, PC Mall, Radioshack and Brookstone.

Source: Twice Magazine

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.

By contrast, Systemax seems on a roll.

Unconventional history

Systemax was launched by two brothers in 1949 as a seller of hand trucks and carts. The three sons of one of the founders expanded what had become a catalog business, Global DirectMail, in 1986 by acquiring a firm that sold computers and computer supplies. It bought TigerDirect in 1995 months after going public, according to a company profile by business information provider Hoover’s Inc.

Despite “the worst recession of our generation,” Systemax sales grew 4 percent to $3.2 billion in its 2009 financial year, a record for the company, Chief Executive Richard Leeds told analysts last month. Same-store sales for the fourth quarter grew 12 percent while sales by its business-to-business units rose 11 percent.

At an auction last year, Systemax snapped up the brand and Internet domain names for another collapsed chain, Circuit City, for an undisclosed price. As a result, it sells computers, TVs and other goods on a number of Web sites.

Unlike Best Buy and other rivals, CompUSA does not sell appliances and offers only a few DVDs as “spontaneous buys.” It does sell video game equipment and has a very large selection of electronic accessories topped only by Fry’s, said Steve Baker, a frequent shopper at the Euless store since it opened.

“I’ll probably be here once a week, seeing what’s new,” Baker said.

Each widescreen TV on display becomes a computer monitor with its own keyboard for easy surfing. So does each display PC and laptop. Touch the keyboard and an Internet page on the item appears on the screen. Tiered displays with cameras and GPS devices share a common computer. Pick up an item, and its Internet page appears.

From that page, a shopper can navigate to any Web site to compare prices or check reviews. If a local Best Buy store offers a large-screen TV for $50 less, CompUSA will match it, said Euless store manager Chris Mora. “But 98 percent of the time, we’re going to be cheaper,” he said. There’s also a 30-day price guarantee.

Should a customer find a cheaper price from a rival Internet retailer or a wholesale club like Costco or Sam’s, matching the price is left to the store manager’s discretion.

More than a price check

“Retail 2.0 is not just a price check.” said Lonny Paul, 43, CompUSA’s director of interactive media. “The average customer can come and get as much depth [of information] as he wants.”

Paul quoted a survey that found that 72 percent of would-be buyers of electronic goods leave without making a purchase so they can go home and research the product and prices online.

All of the interactivity was lost this week on Julia Hoskins and Ivy Ashby, who were shopping the Euless store for a new PC for their company, a geophysical consulting firm. A sales clerk answered all their questions. They were going to go back to their office to price-check when a reporter alerted them to the store’s online capabilities. Unfortunately, they had narrowed their choice down to an Acer computer that was exclusive to CompUSA and could not be easily compared.

Al Meyers, a Dallas-based consultant with Retail Forward, said CompUSA has stolen a march on competitors, but wondered what “pop” in sales the technology has given the chain and whether it justified the cost.

Rival chains have tried other approaches. At the Canadian unit of Staples, known as Staples Business Depot, customers can consult “live video experts,” Meyers said. Best Buy has the Twelp Force — contact with more than 500 employees through Twitter — and its in-store Geek Squad.

CompUSA likewise has in-store consultants, which it calls TechSperts.

“It seems like a high-cost operation,” Vic Gallese, an independent retail consultant in Fort Worth, said of Retail 2.0. With deep discounting, “I don’t know how they can make any margin.”

CompUSA  said the real cost of Retail 2.0 was in the software development, and there is “not a lot of money in hardware, frankly.

“There is an increase in the close rate [actual transactions], customer satisfaction, customer engagement, all those things,” a company representative said. He wouldn’t say how much it has boosted sales, only that “the amount of money is not as important as the best customer experience.”

Source: Dallas Star Telegram