CompUSA

CompUSA's decline and 2007 closure by Mexican retailer Grupo Sánchez demonstrated how electronics retail was being squeezed from multiple directions. The company operated 229 stores selling computers and electronics but couldn't compete with Best Buy's scale, Amazon's prices, or direct sales from manufacturers like Dell and Apple. The mechanism failure was niche collapse between larger competitors. CompUSA's stores were smaller than Best Buy's superstores but larger than Apple stores; the company sold everything but specialized in nothing. When manufacturers opened their own stores and Amazon commoditized pricing, CompUSA had no differentiated value proposition. Circuit City and RadioShack faced similar pressures but survived longer; CompUSA died first because its owner chose liquidation over further investment. This triage decision—recognizing when to stop investing in a declining organism—is itself a mechanism that determines survival. Grupo Sánchez calculated that CompUSA's improvement trajectory couldn't outpace its decline trajectory and cut losses. The brand briefly returned as an online-only retailer under TigerDirect ownership, demonstrating that even failed retail brands retain some value in e-commerce where physical store costs don't apply.