Energy & Denon products at CompUSA

[L.J.]

I was at borders this weekend looking for Blu-Tac(where the heck do you find that stuff?) and just peeped into a CompUSA next door.

Perhaps I'm the last to see this but they had Energy speakers and subs. All I saw was the Take series as far as speakers go and a couple of subs to choose from. S10.3 and Act series sub. They only had a bunch of sat/sub combos and the Energy Take system were the only towers I saw.

They also had Denon AVR's and DVD players. A few to choose from, AVR 1706 - 2106. Not sure about the DVD player model #.

Anyways, just thought I'd mention it. If I'm not mistaken, I think Good Guys and CompUSA are affiliated with each other. This particular location in Modesto is not a GG/CompUSA superstore though. According to their website, they are mainly located in the Bay Area. I'll have to vist one day.

[shokhead]

Interesting Didnt/dont they carry HK?

[L.J.]

Interesting Didnt/dont they carry HK?

I didn't see any HK. I know GG carried it. I'll have to visit one of the superstores next time I'm in the bay.

[topspeed]

Yeah, there was news during GG's closure that CUSA was going to be picking up a lot of their lines. I'd still like to see a Magnolia come into our BB, but I doubt that will happen here in Hicksville, USA.

[Woochifer]

CompUSA stores have stocked home theater gear for several years now, and their primary brands were harman/kardon and Wharfedale. Energy and Denon were carried by the now-defunct Good Guys chain that CompUSA owned. I'd be curious as to whether this those lines are carried at the CompUSA stores outside of the west coast, because Good Guys only operated on the left coast.

Good Guys was a publicly held company until they got into financial trouble and the owner of CompUSA bought Good Guys out a few years ago and took the company back into private ownership (I believe that CompUSA is also privately held). From the get go, I don't think CompUSA had a clue as to how Good Guys would fit into their corporate plans. They remodeled several stores, converted others into combo CompUSA/Good Guys superstores, and revamped their product lineup to include higher end products like Monitor Audio and Parasound. Yet, all the Good Guys stores closed less than a year after all that money was spent remodeling and repositioning those stores.

The home theater sections I've seen at CompUSA are a joke (it's been a couple of years, so they might have changed in the meantime). Hardly anything was hooked up, and the speakers were sitting in these shelves out in a warehouse setting. It's worse than what I typically see at Best Buy or Circuit City, which at least have some order to how the items are displayed. I would hope that CompUSA will at least put their audio items into a decent demo room. Best Buy's Magnolia Home Theater ministores have done very well, and I think part of the reason is that they've done a good job with outfitting the demo rooms and creating a special section that looks a lot more upscale than the big box setting that you see with the rest of the store.

Yeah, there was news during GG's closure that CUSA was going to be picking up a lot of their lines. I'd still like to see a Magnolia come into our BB, but I doubt that will happen here in Hicksville, USA.

Actually, it would not surprise me at all if Magnolia makes a push into the Central Valley. The Best Buy store in Modesto has already got a Magnolia location, and with Good Guys going under, that whole Highway 99 corridor from Merced down to Bakersfield is an underserved market right now.

FYI, Best Buy and Magnolia's major distribution facility for their California (and maybe the whole west coast) stores is located in Dinuba, which is a lot closer to the Hicksvilles of the Valley than SF or LA. So, it would not be much of a stretch to see those Magnolia stores start popping up in the Fresno, Visalia, or Bakersfield Best Buy stores.