Retail

As the highly promotional holiday selling season has proven, consumers love a bargain. But as CE customers find it harder to differentiate between retailers...

Managing a specialty store is like teaching a moving target. Everyone has two agendas: your’s and their’s. However, you can divide the task into...

Why are consumer electronics accessories important for the typical retailer? Well, in many cases, despite being less than 15 percent of a retailer’s total...

I’ve been reading, with no pleasure, about the demise of the TV manufacturing industry as I’ve known it. Among recent headlines: Thomson’s pending TV...

The MEGA/Best Brands Plus buying group celebrated its 20th anniversary with a Caribbean cruise last month on the luxury liner Norwegian Sky. Several hundred...

Home Theater Specialists of America (HTSA) elected several new members to its board. The positions are effective Jan. 1, 2004. Elected president of the...

As every experienced merchant knows, buying merchandise from suppliers for resale to the public is not as simple as it seems. Too often the...

As retail competition grows fiercer — for real estate as well as customers — CE merchants have been forced to don their creative caps...

Years after abandoning the CE business, Macy’s East is back. Well, sort of. The division of Federated Department Stores has re-committed to the category...

Leon Temiz, co-founder and former CEO of metro New York regional chain 6th Avenue Electronics, launched his latest retail venture this month with the...

Best Buy elected to open its second Manhattan store last summer on New York’s Upper East Side, where the space constraints are even more...

CompUSA’s 17-unit test of an in-store A/V shop concept that began last spring came to fruition last week when the final wave of Home...

With the opening of Gateway’s sixth and final pilot store here this month, the only carryover from the old Country Store motif is the...

While many consumer electronics specialty retailers are still finding their footing in this recovering economy, the top full-line mass merchants — namely Wal-Mart, Sears...

Best Buy customers can now activate digital cable and high-definition TV services before leaving the store, with the help of new kiosks available at...

With the holiday selling season rapidly approaching, TWICE wanted to find out what types of CE products might be on Santa’s list, but unavailable...

“Traditional car stereo sales are down approximately 13 percent in units and 18 percent in dollars through May, according to The NPD Group.” —...

In this second and final installment of TWICE’s virtual warranty roundtable, extended service providers address the impact of commodity pricing and non-commissioned sales staffs...

Hopes for a significant industry factory sales bounce back this year, and a push to the historic $100 billion level next year, as expressed...

Radio frequency identification, commonly referred to as RFID, is a groundbreaking technology about to revolutionize the way items are tracked from manufacturer to retailers’...

Assurant and GE are entering a strategic alliance. Under terms of the deal, Assurant will assume the underwriting, obligor and administrative duties formerly performed...

RadioShack held its first-ever Worldwide Innovation Conference (I-CON) here last week, designed to convince CE manufacturers to reconsider the chain when introducing innovative new...

For retailers, extended service contracts are an all-weather friend. When times are tough, as they had been during the first half of the year,...

GERS highlighted new technologies it is developing to enable retailers to respond more quickly and efficiently to changing business conditions during its annual Retail...

Like the resilient New Yorkers many of them are, members of the NECO Alliance — the Northeast buying group, which held its annual convention...

The recent round of second-quarter sales reports by publicly held CE retail chains provided a bird’s-eye view of product performance on store floors nationwide....

Despite a sluggish retail environment, plummeting price points and unrelenting pressure from the national chains, member/owners of the MARTA Cooperative of America are holding...

Leonardo da Vinci is often credited with having the greatest mind ever. Yet among his inventions, his tank never rolled, his air conditioner never...

My interest in supplier/dealer relations was heightened recently when I sat in on a meeting between a retailer and his manufacturer representative. Following the...

Warmer weather, easier comparisons and tax cuts and rebates from the President’s economic stimulus plan helped resuscitate retail sales in July. Ultimate Electronics, the...

CE retailers acknowledge that the advent of interoperability standards could eventually create a meaningful business model for the sale of cable subscriptions, hardware and...

Nationwide’s biannual meeting and convention, held here earlier this month at Caesar’s Palace, was a bittersweet affair as the industry’s biggest buying group bid...

AVAD Northeast/Custom Works A/V Supply will be relocating to a new, larger facility in Taunton, Mass., to accommodate for growth. Planned for late August,...

Upward of 40 vendors displayed their wares at D&H Distributing’s one-day Convergence Trade Show in late July at the Radisson Penn Harris Hotel and...

360 N. 48th Street, Lincoln, Neb. 68504 402-464-8888, www.schaeferstv.com Ron Romero, president Annual Sales (fiscal 2002): $13 million Number of Stores: 1 Product Mix:...

1208 4th Avenue SW, Spencer, Iowa 51301 712-262-2455, (No Web site) Michael Fischer, president Annual Sales: not available Number of Stores: 2 Product Mix:...

1600 Harbour Bay Parkway, Alameda, Calif. 94502 510-747-6000, goodguys.com Ken Weller, chairman/CEO Annual Sales (fiscal 2002): $750 million Number of Stores: 71 Product Mix:...

100 South Anaheim, Suite 250, Anaheim, Calif. 92805 714-502-9620, brandsource.com Bob Lawrence, executive director Annual sales: “around $4 billion” Number of members: 1,800 Number...

14123 Highway 281 North, San Antonio, Texas 78232 210-828-3237, bjorns.com (under construction) Bjorn Dybdahl, president/founder Annual Sales (for the fiscal year ended June 2003):...

2273C Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard, West Palm Beach, Fla. 33409 561-478-3100, audioadvisors.com Jeff Hoover, president/founder Annual Sales (projected custom install sales only for fiscal...

4500 Perkiomen Avenue, Reading, Pa. 19606 610-779-2000, boscovs.com Kenneth Lakin, chairman/CEO, Boscov’s Department Store, LLC Annual Sales (CE and majaps only): $120 million Number...

1200 North Milwaukee Avenue, Glenview, Ill. 60025 847-967-8830, abtelectronics.com Bob Abt, CEO Annual Sales: $100 million Number of Stores: 1 Product Mix: Consumer electronics,...