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CompUSA 2009 Annual Report Download - page 65

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Sales and Marketing

We market our products to both individual consumers and business customers. Our business customers include for-profit businesses,

educational organizations and government entities. We have developed numerous proprietary customer and prospect databases.

We continue to have strong growth in sales to individual consumers, through e-commerce means and retail stores. To reach our

individual consumer audience, we use online methods such as website campaigns, banner ads and e-mail campaigns. We are able to

monitor and evaluate the results of our various advertising campaigns to enable us to execute them in the most cost-effective manner.

We combine our use of e-commerce initiatives with catalog mailings, which generate online orders and calls to inbound sales

representatives. These sales representatives use our information systems to fulfill orders and explore additional customer product

needs. Sales to individual consumers are generally fulfilled from our own stock, requiring us to carry more inventory than we would

for our business customers. We also periodically take advantage of attractive product pricing by making opportunistic bulk inventory

purchases with the objective of turning them quickly into sales. We have also successfully increased our sales to individual consumers

by using retail outlet stores. Over the past several years, the Company has expanded its brick and mortar retail operations through the

CompUSA acquisition and by opening new stores.

We have established a multi-faceted direct marketing system to business customers, consisting primarily of our relationship marketers,

catalog mailings and proprietary internet websites, the combination of which is designed to maximize sales. Our relationship

marketers focus their efforts on our business customers by establishing a personal relationship between such customers and a

Systemax account manager. The goal of the relationship marketing sales force is to increase the purchasing productivity of current

customers and to actively solicit newly targeted prospects to become customers. With access to the records we maintain, our

relationship marketers are prompted with product suggestions to expand customer order values. In certain countries, we also have the

ability to provide such customers with electronic data interchange (“EDI”) ordering and customized billing services, customer savings

reports and stocking of specialty items specifically requested by these customers. Our relationship marketers’ efforts are supported by

frequent catalog mailings and e-mail campaigns, both of which are designed to generate inbound telephone sales, and our interactive

websites, which allow customers to purchase products directly over the Internet. We believe that the integration of our multiple

marketing methods enables us to more thoroughly penetrate our business, educational and government customer base. We believe

increased internet exposure leads to more internet-related sales and also generates more inbound telephone sales; just as we believe

catalog mailings and email campaigns which feature our websites results in greater internet-related sales.

E-commerce

The worldwide growth in active internet users has made e-commerce a significant opportunity for sales growth.

The increase in our internet-related sales enables us to leverage our advertising spending. We currently operate multiple e-commerce

sites, including:

North America Europe