Las Vegas — Tweeter Newco, formerly Tweeter Home Entertainment Group, has shut its two Las Vegas showrooms, including the A/V chain’s first “CE playground” concept store.
The original playground store opened in the city’s Summerlin section just prior to the 2005 International CES. Its sister store opened one year later in nearby Henderson, Nev.
The prototypes served as templates for all new-store construction and retrofits of older locations. The format showcases whole-home control and automation through sleek “notional spaces” designed to replicate the customer’s home, and reflects Tweeter’s renewed emphasis on custom installation and services, rather than grab-and-go sales of single products.
According to a Tweeter spokesperson, the stores were closed July 31 following the chain’s recent exit from California. Absent a distribution base on the West Coast, the Las Vegas units became “remote outposts,” he explained, and “no longer made a lot of sense logistically.”
Las Vegas served as “a great place to test the model,” he noted, and ideas taken from the stores are being applied to the latest round of store renovations. Fueled by funding from its new owners, Schultze Asset Management, Tweeter plans to complete its first 20 remodels by Thanksgiving.
No additional store closings are planned at this time, the spokesperson said.
