LAS VEGAS -- When TigerDirect.com bought bankrupt CompUSA a year ago, it seemed like a natural pairing that would quickly expand the bricks-and-mortar side of its business. The company had 11 retail outlets, but most of its $3.2 billion in sales came from its website. By acquiring CompUSA, which peaked at $5 billion in sales before spiraling into liquidation, TigerDirect picked up 16 more stores (it's now in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina, Texas and Puerto Rico).
"By June," TigerDirect CEO Gilbert J. Fiorentino said, "I realized it was the worst mistake I could have made." Sales at the CompUSA stores were 50% lower than they had been a year before -- far too much to blame on the slumping economy. Fiorentino spent weeks in the stores trying to diagnose the problem, and he had another revelation: "The retail experience is a bad experience. It hasn't changed in 10 years. It occurred to me that the entire experience had to change."
UPDATE: Fiorentino's publicist just called to say his title has changed faster than his business cards. His new appelation is chief executive of the technology products group at Systemax Inc., the parent company of TigerDirect and CompUSA.
That's how he came up with his idea for Retail 2.0, which tries to bring the online shopping experience into the strip mall. It's not new technology so much as a far better use of the technology already in the stores. And although it seems best suited for merchants selling electronics, it's easy to imagine how it might be applied to other consumer goods.
Starting with a single outlet in Dadeland, Fla., CompUSA is pushing the wealth of information from TigerDirect's website into the aisles and onto products themselves. Instead of having the store's TVs and computer monitors display a movie trailer or nature shots in an endless loop, each set or monitor runs a slide show related to the product itself -- say, a discount offer or some basic specs. Clicking on a keyboard in front of the product brings up TigerDirect's Web page for that specific item, which includes photos of the back and interior, along with reviews, detailed specs, videos and compatible accessories. The company makes this happen by connecting each TV and monitor to a computer hooked to the Internet. That way, if the salespeople are busy, uninformed or hiding in the break room, consumers can answer their own questions.
The store goes one important step further -- it lets customers jump from the product's Web page to competing retail sites or online reviewers. When they're done, the display automatically reverts to the product's TigerDirect page and the slide show. For products not on display, customers can take the box to a bar-code scanner at the end of the aisle and call up the TigerDirect page that way. It makes the usual retail approach -- using bar-code scanners to reveal only the price of an item -- seem feeble in comparison.
One other feature from TigerDirect's site has also made it into the store. The company has networking and software experts at its call center to help customers answer technical questions and shop for specialized products. In the store, it has set up webcams that let customers hold video conferences with those experts through the Net. Those experts help give customers access to about 100,000 products in the company's warehouse and partners' stocks, Fiorentino said.
The changes at the Dadeland store quickly transformed it from the company's worst performer in the region to its best. Some of the improvements might stem from the novelty of it all, but Fiorentino is clearly onto something. One reason retail dollars are shifting online is because consumers prefer the experience -- they're more comfortable buying when they're better informed. By pushing TigerDirect's wealth of information into the physical store, maybe Fiorentino can pump some life back into CompUSA.
-- Jon Healey
Healey writes editorials for The Times' Opinion Manufacturing Division.
With technology becoming such an integrated -- and some say essential -- part of modern life across the generations in America, CES is featuring a daylong Silvers Summit today on the relationship between technology and aging. 
LAS VEGAS --- I'm flying 4,000 feet above the desert on a cloudless day. There's a spectacular view of majestic mountains, dramatically stark landscapes and shimmering lakes. 
