They’re dead, Jim
February 2007: CompUSA closes approximately half its stores.
February (approximately) 2008: CompUSA closes the rest of its stores.
An orderly liquidation is sought by the new owners, Boston-based Gordon Brothers Group, who acquired the company from Grupo Carso, the holding company of Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim Hélu. Slim has gotten rather a lot of my money over the years; apart from CompUSA, at one time he owned Prodigy, the one-time online service turned ISP that was eventually folded into SBC, and he still controls América Móvil, which operates the TracFone wireless service in the US. And I have to figure Slim didn’t become one of the richest men on the planet by holding onto properties that lose money.
The fate of other CompUSA properties — the Web storefront and the tech-support division — remains to be seen.
