Business and Technology

After giving me a tour of the site of CompUSA, looking for a bargain because it is already in liquidation, I found it suspiciously similar to the website of Tigerdirect, then I decided to check out where is hosted the CompUSA website, and oh! surprise, it is in range of IPs that belong to Tigerdirect.

Look what I got:

volkan68@volkan68-desktop:~$ nslookup www.compusa.com
Server: 64.52.192.98
Address: 64.52.192.98#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: www.compusa.com
Address: 199.181.77.62

volkan68@volkan68-desktop:~$ whois 199.181.77.62

OrgName: TigerDirect
OrgID: TIGERD-1
Address: 3329 chapell blvd.
City: Durham
StateProv: NC
PostalCode: 27707
Country: US

NetRange: 199.181.77.0 - 199.181.78.255
CIDR: 199.181.77.0/24, 199.181.78.0/24
NetName: TIGER
NetHandle: NET-199-181-77-0-1
Parent: NET-199-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Assignment
NameServer: MARCOPOLO.TIGERDIRECT.COM
NameServer: DNS2.TIGERDIRECT.COM
Comment:
RegDate: 1994-07-21
Updated: 2001-10-04

RTechHandle: AP-ORG-ARIN
RTechName: Amato, Peter
RTechPhone: +1-305-228-3390
RTechEmail: pamato@tigerdirect.com

# ARIN WHOIS database, last updated 2008-01-14 19:07
# Enter ? for additional hints on searching ARIN’s WHOIS database.

If somebody knows what is the story behind this, please let us know. Tigetdirect bought the CompUSA domain name or CompUSA is using Tigerdirect as a ASP for the virtual shop.

The huge retailer store based in Dallas (Texas), is going out of business at the end of this year, announced Gordon Brothers Group LLC. CompUSA is private held by the Mexican financier Carlos Slim, who could lost around $ 2 billions. Gordon Brothers will also try to sell the company’s technical services business, CompUSA TechPro, and its online business, CompUSA.com. It would be up to the buyers whether to continue the CompUSA name.

The spring of this year, CompUSA closed half of its store and received and cash infusion of $440 millions, but looks like that plan doesn’t solve the structural problems of the company. Also we have to considerer that the economy slowdown, could play a key role in the decision to go out of business.

If the USA economy doesn’t turn back to growth path, probably it will be the first of a chain of close or restructure business season.