Micro Center Reveals New Locations: Charlotte and Miami

[Sandy Bridge]

After announcing their new Indianapolis store back in March (which will be opening in July), Micro Center has now revealed the other two locations in their 3-store expansion plans: Charlotte and Miami (https://www.microcenter.com/site/stores/miami.aspx).  Charlotte is slated to open in "early 2024" and Miami in "2024".

 

All three locations will be the first in their respective states.  Previously, the only two in the southeast region were both in the metro Atlanta area.

 

I'm excited to see the expansions; my friends in Seattle are always bemoaning the lack of a Micro Center and I suppose they will continue to do so, but quite a few millions of people will now live close to a Micro Center who didn't previously.

 

Are any forum-dwellers in the vicinity of Charlotte or Miami, or within feasible driving distance?

[ryan]

I think something like this would help quantity of stock 2 new stores more product to order online which is a very good thing, I wish there was a micro center in canada

[Sandy Bridge]

Many of Micro Center's items are in-store-pickup only; even if you can reserve them online, you have to go in-store to pick them up.  This is especially true for their screaming good deals.  It's part of their business strategy; if you're going to swing by the store to pick up your new SSD or CPU anyway, you may well pick up that other thing you've been thinking of buying that is regular-priced.

 

It would think Toronto at least would be a good market.  Not sure how much overhead it would add stocking/supplying parts for two countries though.  But Micro Center has surely done more research than I have on good markets.  Why is Indianapolis a better market than Silicon Valley?  I don't know, it doesn't seem intuitive but maybe the tech scene out there prefers to buy online.  Or maybe Indianapolis being between Columbus, Cincinnati, Detroit, and Chicago just means there are a lot of people in Indy who are familiar with Micro Center but live a bit too far from any to shop there frequently.

 

And as much as I'd love to see a Micro Center in every major metro area, they're probably smart to expand incrementally; this is "fast" by their averages.  What I've heard from the grapevine here is that they're more profitable than most retailers, consistently so, and generally well-managed; I suspect part of that is conservative business practices and managing risk well.  Hopefully these new stores are successful, and there are more in future years.

[saturnotaku]

The costs associated with expanding to Canada are likely extremely high and not sustainable for a company the size of MicroCenter especially when Canada Computers and Memory Express already exist there. Back in the late 2000s, MC had several stores in California including at least one in Silicon Valley - I remember seeing it from Highway 101 when I would regularly travel to the area on business. I'm guessing the lone store still operating there was the only one in the state that was profitable enough to justify maintaining a presence.