Back in the '60s when Richard Schulze opened a Sound of Music store in St. Paul, the world of consumer electronics was pretty simple: stereos and speakers for your home and car.

But by the 1980s, the company had exploded into a discount warehouse retailer called Best Buy whose sales strategy was "grab and go." Loud music, flashing lights and stacks of VCRs, computers, CD players, TVs and other stuff drove Best Buy to become the nation's No. 1 retailer of consumer electronics.

"We were a boy's toy store designed 'for boys by boys,' " says Julie Gilbert, vice president of Best Buy.

Well, no more.

Instead of hitting high-tech hysteria at Best Buy this holiday season, shoppers may notice a softer, more personal atmosphere. Music is quieter. Lights are lower. Salespeople talk to customers about their lifestyles, what they want the technology to do for them — or the person getting the holiday gift — and how they want it to fit into their homes, offices, cars.

In some stores, a "personal shopping assistant" will help with everything from designing a home entertainment system to picking a digital camera. If you need more help, one of thousands of its "Geek Squad" techies will come to your home to hook stuff up.

Stacks of equipment have been whittled down. Aisles have been widened so baby strollers fit through easily. And more stores are displaying little living rooms with wide-screen TVs and surround-sound speakers to show customers what the equipment will look like in their homes.

The "feminization" of the consumer electronics business is under way.

Women now influence 90 percent of consumer electronics purchases, from the type and look of the big-screen TV to the color of the iPod speakers for the living room, Best Buy says. The Consumer Electronics Association estimates their influence is less, but still significant and growing. It says women influence 57 percent of purchases, or $80 billion of the $140 billion spent on consumer electronics this year.

"Sure, our stores used to have one primary customer in mind ... that was the young, techno-savvy male," says Best Buy CEO Brad Anderson in an e-mail interview. "Today we know there are more than just young men in our stores — men and women, all ages, all ethnicities and uncountable backgrounds."

But, he concedes: "Women likely will notice and appreciate some of the changes more."

What's your lifestyle?

About four years ago Best Buy realized that women were warming up to technology. IPods and flat-screen TVs and cool, tiny little speakers you can hide around your rooms helped push women into the stores.

Overnight, it seemed, consumer electronics became a design element.

"It's no longer the days of eight-track tapes and big speakers with the big foam that smells," Gilbert says. "The products we sell and the services we sell are about trends and fashion."

Best Buy executives started focusing on feedback from female shoppers, and it wasn't good. Many women felt that the sales staff — the "Blue Shirts" that tended to be young men — were dismissive.

"Women couldn't get anyone to help them," Gilbert says. "They weren't treated with respect."

So in 2002, the company embarked on an ambitious "customer-centric" plan that started out with four distinct personalities for its stores to focus on. It gave the personalities names like Barry (an affluent tech enthusiast); Jill (a busy suburban mom); Buzz (a young gadget fiend) and Ray (a price-conscious family guy).

In 2005, 40 percent of 300 stores it redecorated were aimed at Barry, with a separate home-theater department and specialists in mobile electronics. Jill stores had personal shopping assistants for busy moms. Buzz stores had lots of video games, and Ray stores focused on low prices. Some stores had two or more personas going at once.

"We've evolved since then," says spokeswoman Dawn Bryant. Now the strategy is broader, with a move throughout all stores to focus on the individual customer, no matter who that is.

Eventually, all of its nearly 750 U.S. stores will be revamped with a softer, more user-friendly decor and more personalized services, basically the Jill model. Some stores have been completely redesigned, while others have undergone only small changes so far.

The growing popularity of home entertainment systems helped spur Best Buy's changes.

In 2000, Best Buy bought Magnolia Hi-Fi, a Seattle-based retailer of high-end home entertainment centers. After it began putting displays of Magnolia's big-screen TVs in little living rooms in some stores in mid-2005, executives noticed that all different types of customers were coming in.

"It wasn't just the affluent, early-adopter male customer we'd expected," Best Buy President Brian Dunn told stock analysts in May. "Time-starved suburban moms loved the Magnolia rooms. Our young entertainment enthusiasts raved about it. And the value-oriented family man aspired to it, even if he eventually made his purchase in the Best Buy home theater area."