BrandsMart USA

NATM Buying Corp. announced Thursday that Gerald "Jerry" Satoren has been named its executive director.

NYNE said this week that it has added Abt Electronics, Altex Computers & Electronics, and Hudson Group’s “Tech On The Go” airport retail network  as retail partners. 

Dick Wallace Wednesday announced his resignation from BrandsMart USA, a company where he spent 24 years, most recently as Chief Marketing and Merchandising Officer. In his resignation letter, Wallace expressed a desire to go back to school, possibly teach, spend more time with his family and focus on his health.

The tide is changing on the once-fearedpractice of showrooming, where customers check out products in the store and whip out their smartphones to search for a better deal. A growing number of retailers are adopting the philosophy of engaging smartphone-wielding mobile shoppers in an effort to win them over and, ultimately, boost sales. Hubert Joly, CEO of Best Buy, which has lost more sales to Amazon than any other electronics retailer, even went so far as to proclaim in a recent Wall Street Journal article: “We love showrooming.”
 
What gives?

Towards the end of 2012, despite signs of good news, Vance Pflanz, CEO of Pflanz Electronics, was leery.

The way Michael Perlman sees it, there probably has never been a worse time to be a traditional consumer electronics retailer: A relentlessly bad economy has battered sales and beaten back consumer confidence; anyone can find just about anything cheaper on the Internet (and, in most cases, skip the state sales tax while doing so); the general CE industry has practically handed customers over to Apple. The list goes on.

BrandsMart USA and Sony Electronics Inc. have collaborated to open a showroom just for Sony products inside a Miami store.

The electronics retailer is celebrating the first "store within a store" concept with Sony this weekend at its north Miami location in 167th Street. Unlike the many other brands carried in the store, the specially designed 625-square-foot Sony showroom will feature a variety of Sony electronics that include smart TVs, cameras, laptops and tablets, all in one spot.

"When the shoppers enter the dedicated Sony space, they can explore products from nearly every category,"

I recently ate lunch with executives from a number of retailers, including ABC Appliance, BrandsMart USA, the NATM Group, Nebraska Furniture Mart, OneCall and the PRO Group. The conversation focused on how to compete in an economy where consumers shop price on their phone even for a $20 item.

Price shopping has been around as long as retailing but the practice of “showrooming”—a customer checking out products in the store and using his smartphone to search for a better deal, in some cases scanning barcodes—is a relatively new and growing trend that’s making brick-and-mortar retailers nervous.

Sales of Sony products over its direct web site and call center from Black Friday through Cyber Monday increased 40 percent.