It’s Never Too Late for Electronics : Retailing: When Good Guys entered the competitive L.A. market, it decided to burn the midnight oil--and then some--to draw shoppers.

Sometimes a customer just doesn’t want to be rushed.

Take lab technician Gary Tam, for example. He arrived at the all-night Good Guys consumer electronics store on the Westside about 1 a.m. Wednesday to check out its selection of car stereo equipment.

It wasn’t until 4:50 a.m.--after nearly four hours of having a sound room largely to himself--that he wearily wandered to the cashier and plunked down some cash to order a $180 pair of speakers. “I’m just so tired, and I felt like buying. They sounded good,” he explained.

That’s hardly the pace at which retailing normally works during these frantic, final days of the holiday shopping season. But, then again, Good Guys late at night is hardly a normal retailing operation.

At an hour when most retailers are shutting down, the Good Guys location on North La Cienega across from the Beverly Center is just getting a fresh surge of electricity. It’s billed as the world’s only 24-hour-a-day consumer electronics store.

But why on earth would a consumer electronics merchant want to go to the expense of keeping a staff working through the night? And why would any audiophile want to investigate the mysteries of woofers and tweeters at 3 a.m.?

To find out, a Times reporter spent the better part of a 10 p.m.-to-10 a.m. graveyard work shift at Good Guys. Early on, it was humming, with about 50 shoppers weaving through the two-story, 20,000-square-foot store.

By 5 a.m., there wasn’t a customer in the house, and the staff was watching television, checking price tags and good-naturedly shooting the breeze on what usually is its slowest night of the week.

Throughout the shift, two facts came clear: One, this is not an easy way for Good Guys to make money, even as business picks up during the home stretch of holiday season. Two, this routine can be an unexpected joy for workers and shoppers who enjoy the low-key, unharried tempo of business in the middle of the night.

“I’m a night owl,” Tam said. “Where else could I shop this late at night?”

“I figured I’d beat the holiday crush,” added Curtis A. Westfall, a lawyer who came in before 5 a.m. to buy a palm-size computer. “No traffic. No crowds. Personalized service.”

The Christmas shopping season is pivotal to Good Guys--the company counts on sales being about 2 1/2 times higher in December than in an average month. With bigger rivals Circuit City and newly arrived Silo also fighting hard for customers in the Los Angeles-area market this year, Good Guys faces a stiff challenge.

So far, though, Good Guys executives say their six locations in Los Angeles and Orange counties haven’t been pinched by competition or recession.

Philip Lee, regional sales manager for Southern California, credits Good Guys’ buying staff for snapping up many of this Christmas’ hottest gifts: portable CD players; Turbo Express, Nintendo and other video games; telescopes, 35-mm. cameras and the VCR Plus remote-control video programmer.

When Good Guys entered the Los Angeles area with the La Cienega store in July, company executives knew they needed something extra to set themselves apart from the competition. They consider their customer service a strong point, and they wanted to drive that point home.

That’s where the 24-hour strategy came in. What better way to tell customers that you will bend over backward for them than to keep a store open all night? And what better way to grab attention than to have what may be the only 24-hour store in the industry?

One of the public relations payoffs came when TV talk show host Arsenio Hall mentioned the store on the air and asked his audience why anyone would buy a stereo in the middle of the night. “That’s the kind of joking we like,” Lee said.

Not that it was purely a publicity maneuver, company executives say. “You don’t go through a move like this just for publicity,” said Robert A. Gunst, president and chief operating officer, based at the Burlingame, Calif., headquarters.

It turns out that the La Cienega store roughly breaks even on its 10 p.m. to 10 a.m. shift. Sales slow down at night, but the extra operating expenses are minimal.

The store’s late-night performance is good enough that the company is promising to keep it open round-the-clock and to consider doing the same thing eventually at a few of the 30-store chain’s other busiest locations. The La Cienega store draws traffic from a neighboring all-night Ralphs supermarket, movie theaters whose last showings end around midnight and shift changes at nearby Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

There can be a few drawbacks for shoppers. One customer who wanted to buy $1,700 of video equipment at night couldn’t get his check approved; when he returned around 9:45 a.m., he got the OK.

Also, if a salesperson doesn’t know the answer to a customer’s question, there probably is no one else in the department to help. That can be a problem for the “techies” who drop in at night.

For employees, security is always a consideration, too. Only one of three doors is open at night. As you’d might expect from a consumer electronics store, video security cameras stand watch over nearly every corner of the building.

The four nights-a-week work schedules can disrupt personal routines. “I just got married,” said night manager Tony Carriedo, 29. “This is tough for my wife.”

At work, though, the staff seems to thrive on the casual, jocular atmosphere. When a salesman falls asleep during a slow moment, co-workers are quick to record the snoring on videotape.

Sales staffers also say they get a kick out of serving the stream of musicians and celebrities who frequent the store at night, sometimes to avoid attention. Axl Rose, singer for the heavy metal group Guns N’ Roses, came in one night around 4 or 5 a.m. and bought $6,000 of Bang & Olufsen stereo equipment.

“We see a lot of serious buyers at night,” said Michael W. Frazier, a gregarious, 7-foot-2 salesman. “If you come in at 2 or 3 in the morning, you’re coming in to buy.”

THE GOOD GUYS ON LA CIENEGA Background: Burlingame, Calif.-based chain comprises 30 consumer electronics stores. Store on La Cienega is one of its most successful, and it is the only store in the chain--and perhaps in the entire industry--open 24 hours a day.

Hot Products: VCR Plus video programmer, portable CD players, Turbo Express, Nintendo and other video games, telescopes, 35-millimeter cameras.

Finances: During the fiscal year ended Sept. 30, the company’s net income rose 86% to $7.4 million on revenue of $294.0 million, up 51% from the previous year.

Employment: 2,000 overall; 100 at the La Cienega store.