A STORE VISIT WITH DATAVISION CEO JIMMY GARSON

What’s the history of DataVision? 

I’ve been in the consumer electronics and PC businesses for a long time. Before DataVision, I ran a company called United Computer. We were one of the first Apple dealers and then launched the Next computer before Steve Jobs went back to Apple. Then, in 1990, I started DataVision, primarily as a mail-order catalog business, back when everything was thriving in the PC and consumer electronics businesses. For the first two years, before we opened our first retail store, we were catalog-based. We’re one of the first actual computer mail-order businesses, for both consumers and B2B. Then, in 1993, we opened our first flagship store on Fifth Avenue and 39th St. We advertised in Computer Shopper and other magazines, and customers would just call an 800 number to order what they needed.  

We’ve always been a major part of the retail landscape in New York, but since we’ve been online since the start of the Web, a big part of the focus of our business is online sales. We’re authorized to sell all the major brands — Apple, Samsung, Sonos, to name a few — online. We also have a very strong B2B business, which has been our focus for the past five years. And then, over the past three years, we’ve built up a strong custom install business, which handles everything from small and medium businesses, to private homes. We do a lot of networking for the businesses, and our sweet spot is $3 million to $25 million homes. We also have a complete service center to service all the major PC brands. So we’re a jack of all trades. 

How many stores do you have now? 

Right now, we have one store located on 38th St. in Manhattan. Our original store was a 35,000-square-foot showcase on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 39th St. It was three floors. It was like the Henri Bendel of computers. If you wanted an $8,000 IBM ThinkPad, we had it in stock. If you came in and said, ‘I want this, and I want Adobe Premiere and this specific configuration,’ we did it on the spot for you.  

We moved out of our Fifth Avenue store about six years ago. Then we were on 23rd St. between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, then we moved back up to 38th St. because we ended up capturing more square footage for a big difference in terms of reduced rent. We were about to do a grand opening when corona hit, but now we’re looking to expand and take more space, now that rents are so cheap. We’re going to use the extra space to do local fulfillment, so we can stock more products in the city and do same-day fulfillment — an hour or two — anywhere in the city.  

We’ve mostly always been online, and the one flagship store,


though we did expand many years ago into Long Island, and we were looking to expand further than that, but we always knew that brick-and-mortar retail wasn’t the avenue to go. We’ve always really focused our business on B2B, custom install, and online sales. I could open 10 stores tomorrow, right? But I’m doing more online than most companies with 150 stores, so why do I need a storefront? I think not opening stores is one of the greatest things we ever did. We’re still in business after 31 years.  

Get detail info: A STORE VISIT WITH DATAVISION CEO JIMMY GARSON

Important Link: consumer technology retailing

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