Miami, Fla. – Samsung opened store-within-a-store facilities in six CompUSA stores in the Miami metro area during the weekend.
The stores are being used to highlight Samsung’s digital products and give CompUSA a revenue stream from outside its traditional, but sluggish, PC hardware and software area. The facilities, located in the center of each store, feature a glass counter and shelving holding about 30 Samsung products ranging from digital audio and DVD players to a 24-inch HDTV-ready LCD monitor. CompUSA CEO Hal Compton and Dr. Daeje Chin, Samsung’s digital media business CEO, said the concept dovetails perfectly with how each is trying to position their company.
“We want to move away from just being a PC store,” Compton said.
Meanwhile, Samsung is hoping to swing the high-tech consumer’s perception of the company as only a semiconductor maker by showing them a wide range of digital products, Chin said.
Samsung used the store openings to debut a few new products, including its first TV/DVD player combo, $499 street price, and a $2,499 DVD-RAM home recorder.
Samsung and CompUSA are using these six stores as a test bed. The concept will be spread through the CompUSA chain, but will undergo changes as the companies discover what works best, Compton said.
