With the announced shuttering of half of the CompUSA stores in the US, I’ve discovered that all three CUSA stores in the St. Louis area are no longer listed among the company’s store locations, leading me to believe ours will be gone. This leaves us with BestBuy and Circuit City as the major computer/electronics dealers in town. ‘Tis a pity.

If you needed a cable, a connector, lights to mod your case, a fancy cooling fan or a high-end printer (CUSA was the only chain in town carrying the Epson R2400 printer), then CUSA was your stop. Their customer service wasn’t always stellar, but you could pretty much count on them having what you needed. If they didn’t have, it’s a good bet no one else in town did either.

I surely don’t see BB and CC filling the void that will be left by CUSA. It’s the business models of those stores, in particular BB, that likely drove CUSA’s demise. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” so I’d expect the small parts and eclectic computer gear niche will be absent, save for some small selections at the mom-and-pop shops.

Alas, CompUSA, I knew ye well.