TigerDirect Closing Most North American Retail Stores?

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According to this reddit post, a person claiming to be a TigerDirect employee says the company is closing all but four stores in North America and liquidating its assets starting tomorrow. Obviously we don't know how valid this is but I guess we'll all know soon enough.

Alright guys the meeting has finished up and got lots of Intel. TigerDirect is closing 31 out of 35 stores. The ones that are staying open are Miami, Puerto Rico, Jefferson, and I forgot the last one. Gordon Brothers is taking over liquidation of the stores closing and the sales begin once we open back up tomorrow. As far as how great the sales are, I don't know. Lots of screaming, yelling, tears. Just people are in disarray, especially the ones that have been with the company for a very long time. Here is some of the signs you all are gonna see soon.
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There are 2 in Tampa I need to goto and see these deals before they are all gone. RoadTrip on Saturday!
 
What, CompUSA stores closing?!?! It's all coming back to me now!

The one in Arlington Texas lasted all of like a year before they shut it down.
 
westrock2000 said:
What, CompUSA stores closing?!?! It's all coming back to me now!

The one in Arlington Texas lasted all of like a year before they shut it down.
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There was one an hour from here for a few years, although I prefered Computer City, that is until they shut down.
 
The deals form these liquidations are rarely all that great.

Usually they kick out all the regular employees and a special liquidation team working for the liquidator comes in. The liquidator gets paid based on how much they can squeeze out of the assets in the allotted time.

So they usually create a huge hullabaloo and hype, with big "going out of business" signs, etc, but start with very minor discounts, and then slowly up the discounts over time.

This means that by the time the discounts start getting good, most of the decent stuff is already gone.

Does anyone remember the CompUSA liquidation sales?
 
Never had good experiences with their mail order services, but that really sucks for the people that lived near one.
If my local Microcenter were to close I'd be devastated.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041478422 said:
Does anyone remember the CompUSA liquidation sales?
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True, although CircuitCity had some godlike deals when they were going under. I bought about $3K in home theater equipment for less than $500. New Blu-Rays were $1 each.
 
When the Tiger direct in Chicago closed there were barely any deals and very few super deals. Don't get to pumped, they will try to make everything look like a deal but chances are you can get it cheaper everyday of the week from somewhere else.
 
Aannnnnnnnd here's the business reasons:


Systemax, Inc. (NYSE: SYX) reported Q4 EPS of ($0.04), $0.22 worse than the analyst estimate of $0.18. Revenue for the quarter came in at $912.6 million versus the consensus estimate of $871.5 million.

Richard Leeds, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, said, "Fourth quarter performance was similar to the trends we have witnessed throughout 2014, with all of our B2B channels delivering revenue growth, while our retail business struggled. Our results highlight the focus we have placed on our B2B channels during the past several years and the opportunities we see in this business. Our Industrial Products Group again grew tremendously, generating full year revenue of $556 million, up 17% from 2013. Across our worldwide B2B operations we continue to make investments to strengthen our market positions by bringing more value to our customers, through improved service levels, an expanded product offering and the introduction of new solutions capabilities."

Leeds continued, "After an extensive review and planning process, we are taking actions immediately to accelerate our B2B and public sector customer focus in our North American Technology Products business. These actions will include the exit of substantially all retail store operations; closing a distribution center; and implementing a general workforce reduction to realign our resources solely with our B2B focus. We have engaged Gordon Brothers to assist with the retail store process and anticipate that all of these actions will be completed by the end of the second quarter."

"This was a difficult decision, but one that reflects the opportunity we see in the B2B marketplace as well as the realities of how the consumer market has changed over the past few years. It will allow us to place additional resources behind our B2B growth initiatives and will be accretive to our financial performance after one-time costs. We expect this strategic realignment to result in a more streamlined and focused operating platform. Once completed, all of our operations across Europe and North America will be B2B centric, a channel we have served continuously since Systemax's founding over 65 years ago and where we see continued growth across all our geographic markets. On a personal note, I want to thank our employees who have worked hard in the retail business over the past years," Leeds concluded.

The Company expects one time exit and severance costs, will aggregate between $50 million and $55 million. After completion the Company expects to realize improved annual profitability of between $18 million and $22 million on a pre-tax basis.
 
Domingo said:
Never had good experiences with their mail order services, but that really sucks for the people that lived near one.
If my local Microcenter were to close I'd be devastated.
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I bought my first SSD, a 120GB OCZ Agility (the first one) from their webpage back in early 2010 for about $300. Was a hell of a deal at the time and i was happy with it (until the SSD started dying, but that wasn't TigerDirects fault)

I have usually preferred Amazon and Newegg though.

Amazon tends to be more reliable, ship more quickly and and package stuff better, but Neweggs search and browse function is overwhelmingly superior to Amazon when it comes to computer parts.

Amazons fuzzy logic search results have on many occasions resulted in near disaster purchases, because the part numbers and model numbers in the computer world can be so similar, yet perform so differently.

I - too - love my local Micro Center. I don't go there as often as I should. Amazon and Newegg have been slowly killing the local computer stores for years. Unfortunately there is no way to know how well Micro Center is doing, as their parent company Micro Electronics, Inc. is privately held...
 
Tiger Direct is competition to my store here in Canada so I am happy reading this. I wonder if their Canadian stores are closing.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041478440 said:
I - too - love my local Micro Center. I don't go there as often as I should. Amazon and Newegg have been slowly killing the local computer stores for years. Unfortunately there is no way to know how well Micro Center is doing, as their parent company Micro Electronics, Inc. is privately held...
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Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves and as such I have to respond.

Amazon and Newegg aren't putting anyone out of business, it's people shopping on them instead of the B&M stores that does it. It's a subtle but important difference.

It's funny the number of people I know who bash Walmart for "closing down all the mom & pop stores" but when you ask them if they continued to shop the mom & pop stores after Walmart opened and to a person they say "No, Walmart's prices were so much cheaper." But of course they don't like it when I point out that Walmart didn't close them, you and everyone else who wouldn't shop at them closed them down.
 
And here is what will happen with the liquidation company.

they will come in and mark up the prices and then mark them down.. and they will still be higher than original prices for the first week or so.

then they will start have "larger" markdowns based on the inflated prices.

By the time everything is almost gone and 90% of the customers who came in for the "liquidation sale" get ripped off, there will be some decent deals on the remaining junk that is left.

I have seen this same thing happen a few times in different stores near where I live.

It is not even worth going to a liquidation sale as they liquidators just try to rip you off, claming that you are getting a great deal when in fact it is the opposite of a sale.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves and as such I have to respond.

Amazon and Newegg aren't putting anyone out of business, it's people shopping on them instead of the B&M stores that does it. It's a subtle but important difference.

It's funny the number of people I know who bash Walmart for "closing down all the mom & pop stores" but when you ask them if they continued to shop the mom & pop stores after Walmart opened and to a person they say "No, Walmart's prices were so much cheaper." But of course they don't like it when I point out that Walmart didn't close them, you and everyone else who wouldn't shop at them closed them down.
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Fair enough. I'll grant you that regarding Amazon and Newegg, but it does take two to tango.

If you are objective regarding Walmart though, they do have a point. Walmart comes into a town, and sells everything at a loss for several months. Waits for the inevitable closing of the competition then jacks prices back up again.
 
If Tiger Direct is really closing their Canadian stores I'll show up the first day. I haven't bought anything from them since I bought a Hyundai Imagequest monitor in 2005 because they were the only guys carrying them. I'm not really surprised because their stores were dirty, the online store is badly organized and their prices are worse on most things than their the local competitors (NCIX, Newegg, Canada Computers).
 
I worked as a tech there a while back. Horribly run, from the top down. No merchandise, managers lied out the ass to make sales, sleazy bundling tactics, kept finding ways to remove commission and spiffs, and ran all their decent salespeople and technicians out of the store. Nor marketing or advertising locally, either.

In short - good riddance. I wish a better store (like MicroCenter) would open up more in more locations. I've got a Fry's and MicroCenter in the DFW area here, just a stone skip away, so I'm not worried personally :)
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Sorry, but this is one of my pet peeves and as such I have to respond.

Amazon and Newegg aren't putting anyone out of business, it's people shopping on them instead of the B&M stores that does it. It's a subtle but important difference.

It's funny the number of people I know who bash Walmart for "closing down all the mom & pop stores" but when you ask them if they continued to shop the mom & pop stores after Walmart opened and to a person they say "No, Walmart's prices were so much cheaper." But of course they don't like it when I point out that Walmart didn't close them, you and everyone else who wouldn't shop at them closed them down.
Click to expand...

If you have a store that went out of business when Walmart came to town, then there must have not been much to draw people to your store in the first place other than being the only place to purchase said goods before Walmart came to town.

If you are the only player or one of the only players in town and all are small shops, and the Walmart or some other big box store comes to town and it hurts your business so much that it can''t survive, you are doing something wrong.

I know I don't shop at Walmart all that much anymore because their prices are really not all that great, and most of their products that are cheaper than name brand stuff are just trash.

We can get better deals at other stores locally for the most part.
 
cyclone3d said:
And here is what will happen with the liquidation company.

they will come in and mark up the prices and then mark them down.. and they will still be higher than original prices for the first week or so.

then they will start have "larger" markdowns based on the inflated prices.

By the time everything is almost gone and 90% of the customers who came in for the "liquidation sale" get ripped off, there will be some decent deals on the remaining junk that is left.

I have seen this same thing happen a few times in different stores near where I live.

It is not even worth going to a liquidation sale as they liquidators just try to rip you off, claming that you are getting a great deal when in fact it is the opposite of a sale.
Click to expand...

This is correct. When CompUSA was liquidated I saw every single item in the store leap from current pricing back up to original MSRP regardless of how long it had been since that time and regardless of what the pricing had changed from since that time. For example, PS2 games that were $15 suddenly became $49.99 with 10% off. These "discounts" continued plunging down until most of the stuff anyone wanted was long gone at pricing worse than it was before liquidation started.
 
Well this sucks for me. TigerDirect is the only store besides worst buy I can buy computer parts locally, best part is it was across the street from my job.
 
Jefferson is basically a store in their distribution center. Kind of surprised it's staying though, since it's kind of in the middle of nowhere.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041478422 said:
The deals form these liquidations are rarely all that great.

Usually they kick out all the regular employees and a special liquidation team working for the liquidator comes in. The liquidator gets paid based on how much they can squeeze out of the assets in the allotted time.

So they usually create a huge hullabaloo and hype, with big "going out of business" signs, etc, but start with very minor discounts, and then slowly up the discounts over time.

This means that by the time the discounts start getting good, most of the decent stuff is already gone.

Does anyone remember the CompUSA liquidation sales?
Click to expand...

Yes, I remember. The stuff wasn't even close to competitive retail by the time they were selling off the fixtures at my local compusa.
 
hope they dont eventually close their online presence. They are the only place I can order PC parts from and not pay California state tax. I even put up with their god awful support because of the lack of tax.
 
The Microcenter here in Kansas City always has a full parking lot .... THANK GOD

Boy, imagine never being able to see what you want to buy in person. Horrible horrible thought.
 
Zarathustra[H];1041478422 said:
Does anyone remember the CompUSA liquidation sales?
Click to expand...

Those were impressive. I can't imagine anyone bought anything from them. PS3 games listed up to $140, then marked down to the amazing price of $80. Only $20 more than every other store in the country. I can see some people being duped for hardware, but for something with a fixed price at every other store?
 
The Microcenter here in Houston moved to a new location and its looking more and more like Best Buy so I dunno, back on topic, I don't recall ever finding any good deal when I went looking at the local Tigerdirect store.
 
Jefferson store is about 20mins down the road from me. I usually drop in about 3 times a year for emergency replacement parts. I think its also the south eastern distribution center, the attached warehouse is huge.
 
SixFootDuo said:
The Microcenter here in Kansas City always has a full parking lot .... THANK GOD

Boy, imagine never being able to see what you want to buy in person. Horrible horrible thought.
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Meh, for most computer stuff that isn't an issue, at least not for me.

I DO like to feel keyboards and mice before purchase though, as it is touch to tell how well they will work for you before feeling them.

Usually I order most of my stuff online, and then go to Microcenter when I need stuff urgently, or when one of their CPU and Motherboard combos seem particularly attractive.

Usually mid build I can be found in microcenter's cable adapter aisle because I forgot a stupid cable (though last time they didn't have what I needed. Needed to turn a PCIe GPU power connector into an EPS12V power connector... Had to turn to Amazon for that one.
 
The Denver Microcenter is almost permanently packed. That includes the check-out lines, which is what matters. I think people are at least somewhat interested in B&M electronics stores. With accessories, adapters, cases, TV's/monitors, and whatnot it definitely makes sense to be able to see something face-to-face. As long as the prices aren't crazy, I prefer it. There's always the catch of paying sales tax vs. shipping, although Amazon Prime partially nullifies that.
No clue if they're making money, but they're definitely busy.
 
DarkStar_WNY said:
Amazon and Newegg aren't putting anyone out of business, it's people shopping on them instead of the B&M stores that does it. It's a subtle but important difference.
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I totally concur.
Its easier to point fingers at the "Evil" corporation, than putting your money where your mouth is.
 
Geforcepat said:
This.:eek:
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being from AL, nobody here has even heard of Frys, but while doing business just outside Chicago, I saw my first TigerDirect b&m store. It was disappointing. It makes Frys look like a professional Scandinavian interior designer came up with their place. It's bland, boring, poor product selection, the employees seemed only mildly interested in what I was there for (and when I'm dressed for business it's done up.. I didnt appear scummy) and ironically, I left there and went to Best Buy for what I was looking for, which was a Sony projector. It was just a glorified warehouse that had tiles laid down, really. Same exact boring and basic metal racks on all isles with zero effort to dress the place up with banners, signs, color of any sort, etc. You'd think being so amazingly shitty looking that the prices would be amazing, but the ONE thing adding any semblance of life to the isles were the 2 workstations where you could check prices on tigerdirect.com against the store. All this seemed to prove to me was that yes, you did in fact have no reason at all to be standing there staring at a tigerdirect screen in a store when you could have just ordered it from home, anyway.

If that one store is representative of all of their stores, they shouldnt have opened them in the first place.
 
In El Paso the CompUSA/Tigerdirect was right next to a Best Buy.

Its both saddening and amazing seeing how many idiots went to Best Buy instead of CompUSA. :(
 
SvenBent said:
I totally concur.
Its easier to point fingers at the "Evil" corporation, than putting your money where your mouth is.
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In the case of Newegg and Amazon no one is saying they are evil. (At least I'm not)

They are apparently doing a better job at satisfying their customers than the B&M's are. They are out competing them. I don't have a problem with this. (unless they use the aforementioned shitty tactics Walmart has been known to use). In fact it is a good thing. It drives innovation and efficiencies in our economy.

Whether it is Newegg and Amazon killing B&M's by competing better, or its the customers by choosing the business that is competing better is really just a moot point as one results in the other.
 
Bigdady92 said:
There are 2 in Tampa I need to goto and see these deals before they are all gone. RoadTrip on Saturday!
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Two?! The only one I know of is on Dale Mabry. I've been there several times, but I do know the parking lot is quite often empty.
 
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