With the likes of CompUSA and Circuit City wrecked on the shoals of the recession, technology retailer Micro Center has opened its 23rd national store beside the Thruway in Yonkers.
Micro Center”™s CEO hopes it will be the chain”™s top performer.
Companywide sales figures for privately held Micro Center were reported by a noncompany source at $1.4 billion for the most recent fiscal year.
More than any of its 36,000 products, general manager Lois Garda ”“ a 12-year veteran of managing large electronics stores ”“ cites service as “our No. 1 priority and our guiding principle. It”™s the reason we”™re in business.” She said Micro Center embraces a “Nordstromlike mentality,” defining that as “making sure the customer has the experience he or she came for ”“ whether that”™s just browsing or having the store provide assistance with a personal guide.”
The facility in the Mall at Cross County occupies the former Circuit City site.
Ohio-based Micro Center construction supervisor Dale Montroy surveyed the warehouse-size layout that includes a 20-seat theater with a 60-inch flat-screen for free weekend seminars; a “knowledge bar” where, on a recent day, accredited computer expert Charlotte Meyhoefer advised on a one-computer, two-screen issue free of charge; and the outsized model train running above the camera station. He pointed to the ceiling. “Isn”™t that lighting cool?” he said of the store”™s copper light fixtures. “That”™s the responsibility of the visual merchandising department.”
The store employs 100. Training included instruction from corporate executive vice presidents in departments such as sales and human resources. Garda said she expects to bring on an additional 50 employees for the holidays: several in September and most of the 50 in October. She calls the employees the store”™s interior customers, as opposed to the buying public, whom she calls exterior customers. “Our associates might tell you that we put as much focus on our interior customers as we do on our exterior customers. We promote a team attitude and this leads to a higher level of service the associates provide to our customers.”
Beginning in the early 1980s, when a computer store could have hitched its star to any number of companies that are now defunct, Micro Center began a sales collaboration with Apple that remains strong.
“A lot of people think this is an Apple store,” said Garda, standing amid the full array of sleek Apple products in the middle of her store. “We offer square footage and selection commensurate with an Apple mall store. With Apple stores in Manhattan and White Plains, we”™re perfectly situated, right in the middle.”
Calling the store “a much-needed retail presence” for Westchester and the Bronx, Rick Mershad, president and CEO, promised in a prepared statement, “selection and pricing of the Internet, along with the opportunity to try out products and purchase them immediately.”
The store opened June 21. The 4-by-14-foot exterior signs for Samsung, Dell, Sony, Apple, HP and Toshiba went up July 26, polishing its look significantly.
Micro Center”™s first store was in Hilliard, Ohio, now the site of its current corporate headquarters. That alpha store has since moved to Columbus, Ohio. Micro Center”™s two other regional stores are on Long Island and in northern New Jersey.
Ed Lukens, Micro Center”™s marketing communications manager, said, “We are looking for additional locations in the New York City metro area.”
Micro Center is privately held and does not disclose sales revenues as a matter of policy. The Columbus (Ohio) Business First newspaper June 4 estimated that Micro Electronics Inc. had sales revenue of $1.4 billion for the period Oct. 1, 2008 to Sept. 30, 2009.
Mershad said, “The Yonkers Micro Center has the potential to become the top-grossing store in the chain.”
