I have only visited Best Buy Intergalactic HQ once, to meet Geek Squad Chief Inspector Robert Stephens, but it reminded me instantly of the time about 40 years ago when my girlfriend and I picked-up her father from work at Bethlehem Steel. Her dad was a salesman and paid sales commissions but — like every other Bethlehem Steel worker — he punched a time clock every day. I don’t think they punch time clocks at Best Buy, but it has that same 20th century industrial feel that told me in 1973 that Bethlehem Steel was doomed. And Best Buy may be doomed, too, announcing last week the token closure of 50 stores, hinting at a shift to selling only mobile devices, but telegraphing loudly that the company at this point really has little idea what the Hell it is doing.
Best Buy sales have stagnated. Some pundits feel they have held onto too much real estate for too long. Some feel they should drop most of their consumer electronics and focus on mobile products. This would make Best Buy exactly like Radio Shack without the advantage of the Shack’s franchise model. Radio Shack would not be in existence today if it didn’t sell cell phones. But with every mobile network having scores of retail locations, how does “focusing on mobile” help Best Buy make more money?
I can remember a time when Best Buy was a good place to get computer accessories, but no more. Best Buy will charge me $20 for a cable I can buy anywhere else for $5. I had to go to Best Buy recently looking for an Ethernet card. They had exactly one card in stock and it wasn’t cheap.
Appliances are cheaper at Lowes or Home Depot than at Best Buy. It’s the same story for TV’s at places like Walmart. Best Buy still has an excellent selection of music and videos, but their prices are not competitive. That’s why same store sales are falling.
Best Buy’s tumble started when CompUSA and Circuit City went out of business. Normally something like that should have been a good thing for business, but Best Buy totally blew it. Best Buy killed both of those other electronics retailers, but then they didn’t keep on doing what they had been doing so well. They replaced their mid range lines of consumer electronics with low cost, house brand junk. They kept their name brand lines, but only stocked the high end stuff and priced it at a premium, abandoning the middle market that had been their traditional strength.
Best Buy has a crappy Internet sales operation. Every competitor’s site is better than Best Buy’s. Best Buy still hasn’t mastered the concept of gift on their website. If I sent you a gift via bestbuy.com, you would not know who sent it. If I wanted it gift wrapped, or a card put on it, forget it. Amazon has had these features for how long, 10 years?
Part of Best Buy’s problem is Information Technology. In Minneapolis, Best Buy is known as a body shop. While they have something like 1000 IT workers, most of them are temporary contractors. They come and go. The number of IT people who are Best Buy employees is very small. Too few to effectively set direction or do things well. Best Buy depends on an army of consulting firms to do its IT planning and projects. They do what they are asked to. Unfortunately there is a big disconnect between what the business really needs and what IT is doing. It is not the army of contractors’ fault. They can only do what they are instructed to do. Their suggestions and opinions are not welcome. There are too few real Best Buy employees with a vested interest in the business to give direction and provide leadership.
Shopping at Best Buy last Christmas was a joke. Best Buy corporate was upset people were using their smart phones to do price comparisons in the stores. Think about that: Best Buy was upset that their customers were too smart, that they actually used the sort of technology Best Buy purported to sell. Worst of all, Best Buy completely missed the simple point that their prices were too high.
Best Buy’s ability to sell premium products at a premium price after CompUSA and Circuit City went under was a temporary thing, In technology prices always go down. You can’t plan on charging the same high price for something year after year.
Best Buy thought that with its main competitors on the ropes and the Geek Squad bringing in service business they could control the market through size alone. But you never control the market no matter how big you are. Even Walmart knows that.
That smug attitude is what killed Bethlehem Steel, too, where they thought the secret to employee productivity was time cards, not brain cells, competitive prices, and great new ideas.
The market isn’t kind to companies that don’t respect their customers. I won’t miss them.
Exactly right. Best Buy raised their prices the day CompUSA closed, and again the day Circuit City went under. Their online inventory system often says things are in stock when they’re not, and you can’t get waited on without making a scene. And they wonder at Amazon’s success.
Aren’t all retailers in retreat? Can they make enough margin to cover that expensive real estate? Not for long.
China is getting much better at shipping from there. Soon, even the warehousing and middle men will be gone.
The Big Box category is dying. You no longer have to go to a Office Depot/Best Buy/Pets Mart/etc to find the selection as the internet has a greater selection than any of those stores.
Hard/Expensive to ship are the only items left for them.
Wow. Do I get the coveted first reply ?
I work in the book industry, where we constantly worry about the effect Amazon has and will have on the publishing industry. As the primary retailer of books, they have huge muscle with the publishers, so can get the best terms, then turn around and sell to consumers at the lowest price. And they have no qualms about selling at a loss in order to drive the smaller guys out. I wonder if they have executed the same strategy with consumer electronics. First Circuit City, now Best Buy. Who’s left ?
Missed by that ” ” much…
Amazon’s strategy of “check out a B&M store and then buy from us” is completely dependent upon there being a B&M store around to use as a punching bag. With Best Buy gone, Amazon will have a harder time of working that angle on, say, Wal Mart and Target.
Nope. The reviews on Amazon are worth a hundred times the value of seeing the item at a B&M. You find out actual useful and less biased results of owning and using the widget, not just for a day, but over time. And at least I don’t waste gas going where what I want is not in stock, or has the wrong size, or whatever.
Do you actually read the reviews? They’re a collection of fanboy and hater data, just like any other customer driven review site. The issue becomes how much you want to believe from either camp.
For example, you can read reviews about a receiver, or you can go out and listen to one at a B&M store. A receiver can get glowing reviews, but if it doesn’t sound right to you, it’s a waste of money.
Even that fanboi and hater data is more useful for most items you could pick up in a Best Buy than going to the store. With the exception of appliances and TVs, everything Best Buy sells is either in a shrink wrapped box or chained to the counter in away that prevents you from really interacting with it. There is little or nothing to be learned that you can’t get from seeing a picture and reading about it.
Dude, you need a faster Internet connection.
Good riddance, what a horrible place to shop…
6th, take that ronc!!
He hasn’t even weighed in yet. I’m disappointed.
“But you never control the market no matter how big you are.”
Doesn’t seem to stop Amazon from trying:
https://www.salon.com/2012/03/13/scott_turow_on_why_we_should_fear_amazon/singleton/
I hate to be that guy, but when did “picked up” get hyphenated?
As far as Best Buy, I’ve visited them maybe 5 times, once to apply for a job. Which I didn’t get, thank God.
It seems to have occurred about an hour before it was suddenly OK for dependent clauses to function as complete sentences. Why is it that “that guy” is always so smug, and yet never checks his own grammar?
[W]hen did “picked up” get hyphenated?
About the same time as anal-retentive. 🙂
Yup, they were great a long, long time ago. Now all you get is poor customer service and overpriced stuff.
Bethlehem steel is gone?
Bethlehem Steel went away in 2003. Mostly done in by unfunded pension and health care liabilities for its retirees.
Good article from 2004:
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2004/04/05/366339/index.htm
Enter HH Gregg to demonstrate what Best Buy used to know.
Eh, I’m not sold on HH Gregg. They’ve got their work cut out for them if they want to compete with Amazon.
HHGregg is day vs night different than Best Buy. I have bought two houses worth of electronics and appliances from them, and they are very courteous and professional. Prices are reasonable, and besides, I would not buy large products from Amazon. If HHGregg delivers a broken product, they take it back and bring a new one on their truck. Not so with Amazon et al… Just my opinion 🙂
Amazon has an excellent return policy. I have only had to use it twice in the 14 or so years I have been shopping with them but both times it was hassle free.
If Best Buy goes under, Wal Mart and Target become Amazon’s main electronics competitors. Amazon can go cheap on them, but I’d never count out Wal Mart and Target. When Amazon corners the market on toilet paper and pet food, I’ll begin to worry. Until then, Amazon will find those two companies a tougher nut to crack. Both have intensely loyal customers and provide consumers with things they absolutely have to have. The more they push into electronics, the harder it will be for Amazon to dislodge them.
Then again, if I were a betting man, I’d say that NewEgg is Amazon’s next corporate target.
In my experience, Target is a terrible place to buy electronics, unless you can afford to bide your time, hoping that the item you need might someday go on sale. Otherwise, you will very likely overpay for a very limited selection of inferior grade items. I won’t shop at Walmart, but I think it is much the same. They rely on cheap advertised prices for toilet paper and cookies to lull you into the careless assumption that their prices must be low on everything.
I am of the opinion that once Amazon has killed off its last competitor, they will need to open showrooms of their own. I like to imagine them as a slightly updated version of the old Paysaver catalog showroom, since the shopping experience will be identical. Another possible outcome is that CostCo really steps up its game.
Amazon would turn into what Sears (and to a lesser extent JC Penney) used to be with its catalog business. I’m not exactly sure Bezos would be flattered by the comparison.
Although I’ve never had a bad experience buying from Newegg, my preference is to buy from Amazon due to the lack of sales tax and zero-bs return policy (both ship quickly).
I tend to prefer newegg for product research, since the reviewers tend to more thoroughly vet the products (talking about internal computer components) and newegg specs are an order of magnitude better than Amazon specs, but I think that the Amazon reviews are good too. The only reviews I distrust across the board are those from Tiger Direct, as they very obviously keep negative reviews from seeing the light of day.
Best buy has been off my “go to” list for years -if I were an audiophile instead of a computer nerd that might be different, but if you’re a pc geek, you’ve gotta be half-retarded to buy from any brick and mortar -unless you need it that day or live close to a Fry’s that is..
I visited Best buy just once and bought LOTS! I never used my points – too complicated, too many rules. I nver went back!
But the article ended badly. “That smug attitude is what killed Bethlehem Steel, too, where they thought the secret to employee productivity was time cards, not brain cells, competitive prices, and great new ideas”. This from a man (I, Cringely) who’s self-professed newest hero is a teacher who blindly (and self-servingly) believes in teachers (hint – teachers have only been around for some 3000 years or so, hardly a “great new idea”)!!! Best Buy – you’re right, Great New Ideas – get real, you believe in them for technology but you’re not so keen on other (non-technology) change (teaching!!!).
I’m sorry, I don’t follow your logic. Please explain.
a BBY flack is quoted in the Star-Tribune that Brian Dunn’s quickie departure was because of a “personal conduct probe.” (read links while they’re hot.)
https://www.startribune.com/local/146811365.html
went into one of their main stores last night to recycle two old TVs and look for speaker mounts. call me a fossil, but my speakers have size and magnet weight, and are flat-response, not band-aid boxes. so their little plastic gizmos for 8 pounds max won’t cut it. there is a feeling of a “3 minute rule” there… you get sold, or you get handed off or abandoned. I got handed off… to the office adjutant… to order speaker mounts through “Marketplace.” which is manufacturer-direct.
online.
in the store.
the only place that rocks is the wireless counter. last exposure, I was in another northern burbs store in which the line was 5 deep for all 5 positions.
but a considerable part of that was that somebody had the bright idea of updating the Windows on their 10-year-old registers. and only one worked due to the upgrades.
there are a whole slew of contradictions for a leading-edge retailer in trendy electronic “shiny” for you to chew over.
The last sentence in your posted link says it all: “The company’s core market, big-ticket consumer electronics items like PCs and flat-panel televisions, has been rapidly shrinking as more consumers migrate to the Internet for their shopping.”
The LCD sales boom is over.
That and Circuit City going bust have merely delayed the inevitable.
Which is why the vendors are hawking 3D so badly, right? They have to have the new shiny to get people to come in and buy the televisions.
Well, either that or the last batch of televisions have to have been made so cheaply that their breaking already.
could be both. 3D is hopelessly useless to a good 10 percent of the population with basically one working eye (ambylopia, disease, whatever.) saw one on an endcap and it basically looked like the kids got behind the TV and turned every colored knob all the way to the side. Dumpster alignment.
High prices could almost be explainable if there were employees knowledgeable about the products they sold. Except, in my experience and in my reading, Best Buy employees don’t know Jack!
About the only thing I can see BB doing is buying/merging with Radio Shack and reducing BB stores to 2-3 x size of a Radio Shack store, drop the music/video sales (Walmart has this), focus on tech support, mobile, and mid-range av solutions.
Shaking me down on the way out of the store is why I no longer even step foot in a Best Buy. Or a Frys. Treating me like a criminal and rifling my bags just encourages me to shop Amazon or NewEgg. Which I do with increasing frequency.
Radio Shack always asking for my name and address stopped me from shopping them in the 80s.
Retail for decades seems to think my buying something is the least important reason why I’m there. Dumb asses.
In those days Radio Shack employees got to know me as Mr. Anonymous.
Yes, the general atmosphere (and especially the “out the door” experience at Fry’s) seems like an almost studied unpleasantness. It didn’t used to be this way, but I now consciously use Best Buy or Fry’s as the showroom for certain items while I would never dream of making a purchase at either of these stores. Yes, I am part of the problem but no, it didn’t have to be this way.
FYI, you don’t have to submit to the amateur TSA theatrics at Fry’s or BestBuy. Once you have paid the cashier, your purchase is yours and the door checker has no more right to inspect your bag than any random shopper. Club stores like Costco are different though – they only admit members, and having your purchases inspected on the way out is part of their terms of service.
When CompUSA was liquidating, I refused to let them look in my bag after checking out; the drone at the door was pissed, but I knew it was my last visit there so I figured what the hell…
Yes, this is the primary reason I won’t shop at BBY anymore. Had two kids with, had my purchase (new cellphone + plan = $300+) and walking out. Checker asked me, I ignored, and he stepped in front of me! Oooh, that made me mad, especially in front of kids. We argued a bit and I let him check, cause kids were there and didn’t want them to see me get REAL mad…
I drop $300+ and you want to check my bags? Cya. Good riddance.
Good Riddance! Sears is next – I don’t see how they even made it this long!
Appliances.
Never underestimate the power of the Kenmore (and the Craftsman) brand names.
Yup, Craftsman is easiest access to decent hand tools. After having a Chinese made wrench (not cheap either) break in my hand and cut my palm, started to buy Craftsman. Figure my daughter or grand child will one day inherit these.
I basically continue to start my shopping for big-ticket stuff at Sears. got our appliances at a Sears Outlet, but you do have to poke around most of the night there. the LCD was a one-and-done as I got a discount off the mail-order price on a 52-inch from the last model year. I’m not picky about features I’m not using, like bound-to-Yahoo streams and the like. slip the laptop on the component table, look up three lines, I can stream from Mars if I want.
That brought to mind what a high school teacher told me back in the early 1970s
– take a broken Craftsman tool to Sears and they will replace it free.
As far as I know, that’s still the case. Has to be the “Craftsman” brand name, however.
And God knows I’ve abused them enough, yet they keep ticking.
Like others have said, Sears is hard to beat for tools that don’t suck actually being on the shelf. Their website however, is at least as much of a mess as Best Buy’s. I may be wrong, but it looks like it aggregates several different e-commerce sites into one, so if you want to check for in-store stock on a certain item, you get a huge number of search results from different retailers -combined on one page. I’d like a hit of whatever the manager who authorized that type of site search smoked, please….
Best Buy is not the same store it was 5 years ago. I hope they learn their lesson from Circuit City, The Good Guys, CompUSA, Ultimate Electronics, et al.
They used to have a pretty good website experience, but five years later, it’s pretty much the same, where Amazon and others constantly improve the customer experience. I’ve been a RewardZone member just about ever since they started it, through the myriad changes. It’s now pretty much worthless. I have two Best Buy giftcards given to me by my employer for Christmas and I still haven’t even stepped foot in a store. I used to eagerly await the Sunday advert looking for what movies they have on sale, but now it doesn’t even come in the paper (The Arizona Republic). They have a wondeful subsidiary that sells more high-end appliances, Pacific Sales, and I’ve bought 4 of my last 6 TV’s there (all Sony – I also bought 2 Vizio’s from Sam’s Club). I usually get a good deal on floor models, which are gently used as the traffic at Pacific Sales is much lower. It’s the first place I shop for TV’s and appliances, but they have virtually no web presence, with no online storefront at all.
Another place I used to shop frequently is Crutchfield, but they have fallen into the same malaise that Best Buy seems to be stricken with. Prices are high, and the value add isn’t there any more.
Best Buy needs to refocus on customer service and quality merchandise. Being a showroom for warehouse delivery next Tuesday doesn’t cut it any more. There is another local chain here in the Phoenix area, Spencer’s TV & Appliances, that is all about service and selection, and you can get a better deal if you ask for it. Their salespeople seem to care about their job and getting the customer what they want. They don’t shuffle you off to an online kiosk. They have a depth of understanding what they’re selling, too.
If Best Buy intends to compete against Radio Shack, then they might as well close the doors now, because I honestly don’t know anyone who has bought a mobile phone from there. Ever.
Message was too long, I got bored after the first 3 lines!
Wow, Joel, you are really rude.
P.S.
I was after reading your first 3 letters (A silly insult, isn’t it?).
Crutchfield still puts together decent install packages for car audio gear so I buy it there. But for home audio, Amazon’s become my goto store.
The only thing Best Buy offers is convenience — they exist and the doors are open during daylight — and that only if they have the product/gadget that you must have and dare not wait two days for the UPS man.
I’d rather shop at Sears — with Charlie Sheen in tow pretending to be Steve Jobs.
>> They replaced their mid range lines of consumer electronics with low cost, house brand junk.<<
I thought I was the only one who noticed that!
The main problem for me is that BB is just a horrible place to visit – visual overload and noisy … it’s simply not a nice place to visit.
Bob,
Quite off topic, but I’ve just found out that Jack Tramiel, founder of Commodore, has died. I’ve always been fascinated by Commodore and wondered if you have any plans to post your thoughts.
I’m working on it. Look for something in the morning.
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Another one bites the dust… Join CompUSA, Circuit City, Media Play, Incredible Universe, and all the other brick and mortar electronics stores that just don’t get it.
[…] I, Cringley: In Minneapolis, Best Buy is known as a body shop. While they have something like 1000 IT […]
But the partner from Accenture told me they could handle it all!
What, you have a problem with a critical component of your sales application? OK, bring it up at the Friday status meeting with our outsource partners so we can add it to the to do list and risk-rank it appropriately.
We can’t have anyone just “working on” something or “fixing problems” unless both the business process owner and the AccentYoungCoopers manager have signed off on it.
The thing is Amazon will *never* be able to get something to me faster than I can go get it myself at a B&M. I think this is where places like Best Buy are going to duke it out. Sort of the 7-11 of consumer stuff. Everyone knows you can buy milk cheaper at the grocery store than at 7-11 but when you really need milk fast… you pay the premium price for convenience. Some times you just can’t wait 7 to 10 days for Amazon to deliver. And sometimes by the time you pay for express shipping (and still don’t get it until tomorrow), you might as well have driven to Best Buy (or what ever) and payed their higher price and dealt with the moron sales people. That is the price you’ll pay for convenience.
Amazon, coupled with Amazon Prime, has taught me that I need almost nothing immediately. A day or two is fine.
I’m with Vincent on this one. I have Amazon Prime, and I’ve learned that there is almost nothing that I need from Amazon or a B&M that I cannot wait 2 days to get. Sometimes, if I order early enough in the day, sometimes the items are delivered the next day without having to pay extra. That part might be due to the fact that I live in a large metro area (LA now, Chicago previously), but it’s still nice when it happens. Plus, if you plan ahead by a couple days on what you need, there is really no problem with waiting. The last time I bought something at Best Buy was at Thanksgiving when they were basically giving away some DVDs and my Harmony 650 remote. That was the only time in a long time their prices have been better than Amazon for anything I’ve wanted/needed.
If you find yourself buying a lot of electronics or other items that Amazon sells, seriously consider paying the $80/year for Amazon Prime to get the 2-day shipping (plus a bunch of free streaming movies and TV shows and a Kindle book lending library). The amount you save over the B&M stores will pay for the subscription very quickly. And if you are worried about your local government not getting the tax revenue from Amazon that they would get from the B&M store, it’s only a matter of time before that changes. Here in CA Amazon must begin collecting sales tax by September 15 of this year, and other states are looking to do this as well.
BestBuy has done one cool thing recently. They have installed robotic kiosks in airport gate waiting areas. In those areas the same people who will stand in line to sit on the floor near the only AC power outlet, will pay big bucks for a replacement of the USB charger that they left in their hotel room.
They can now take this technology and put up a kiosk right next to the Redbox kiosk outside of the QuickTrip or 7-Eleven store. And they won’t have to worry about returns, or clueless employees, or even “inventory shrinkage” from people walking out the door with stuff they haven’t paid for. But are they that smart, or will they go the way of Blockbuster first?
About 15 years ago, when BB was flying high, I attended a seminar on “world-class financial performance”. BB’s CFO made a presentation and I distinctly remember being surprised that he never once mentioned “customers”, or even “products”. All he knew was that “economic value added” was the only important performance measure. That theory worked quite well for many years — until it didn’t.
Sooner or later you have to produce and/or sell something that people want — or at least give them a good experience while they buy generic products.
BB did neither, and I see no way out of their self-inflicted, eventual disapperance. In a few years no one will even remember…
I concur, Best Buy is not even as good as it was in 2008. We have one across the street from where I used to work in downtown Baltimore. I used to go there occasionally do window shopping during my lunch. Usually which amounted to me photo graphing the tag and finding the better deal on same product at Amazon. In the last couple years they seem to think it was good for their brand to have a act checkout all that crap you find on on informercials or at the SeenOnTV store. Really felt like they no longer had an idea of what their brand was or respected their customers, certainly not me. Right not there is no longer a single retail store here I would turn to for electronics which were fairly priced. The one good thing I will say in BB defense, the Baltimore store has some well trained and informed sales people in Apple section. Better than most of the Apple retail sales people have interacted with since the iPod boom days.
Best Buy is Doomed! Next story: Water is wet and fire is hot!
Yeah, it’s not hard to see that Best Buy is in trouble. Talk to your friends and neighbors and see when the last time they were in one. People use to go there all the time for TVs, electronics, phones, etc. Now, it’s Costco, Home Depot, and Walmart — that is if they’re not buying stuff from Amazon.
Here’s the problem. What’s the difference between a Sony TV and one from Vizio? They’re both made from the same outsourced components, and Vizio TVs look just as good as the ones from Sony, but are about 1/3 of the price. Come to think of it, have you ever heard of Vizio before? Neither have I, yet I just bought one from Costco a few months ago.
This is the heart of the problem. It use to be that Best Buy could sell Sony TVs and IBM computers. These were brands people wanted and Walmart didn’t sell. But, all this stuff is commodities now. You can say that Apple is the exception, but that Samsung Galaxy phone looks pretty good too. Even the high end is becoming a commodity. After all, everything is now built in a Foxcomm factory. (Which is by the way where Vizio comes from. They’re simply an outfit that outsource everything from the same factories where all the major brands outsource their stuff).
How can Best Buy survive? They can’t compete against Amazon by price and selection. Heck, you can’t even compete against them on delivery. If you buy a Washer and Dryer, Best Buy can’t deliver it any faster than Amazon can.
Best Buy’s only choice is to do what the Web can’t, and follow Apple’s and Nordstrom’s examples: Go for extreme customer service. Get rid of the warehouse look with dusty boxes of computers stacked up to the roof. Costco does it better. Put out stuff for demos. I don’t mean hook up a computer, so people can wiggle the mouse around a bit, and see all the error message dialog boxes.
Get a high speed Internet connection, and let people use the computers. Put in Microsoft Office. Let people play. Setup a few dozen Xboxes, Playstations, and Wiis with games. Turn on the TVs with couches for people to sit on, and watch their favorite shows on various TV sets. Let people play with those smartphones and try some of those apps. Have cameras where people can take pictures. Heck, setup a few washers and dryers and let people do their laundry. Amazon can’t do that. People will come just to play, and if they come around enough, they’ll buy too.
Then, hire knowledgable staff and pay them a good salary. Give them hours and hours of training. Teach them how to talk to people, and problem solve. Setup a place where people can go with their problems, and solve them on the spot like Apple does 80% of the time. Give your staff the power to make decisions on things like extending a warranty or replacing something for free.
Will it work? No. Best Buy stores are all in the wrong locations. They’re usually in big giant strip malls filled with big giant box stores like Burlington Coat Factories and Bed, Bath and Beyonds. People aren’t going to Linens and Things, and then walk over to the Best Buy at the other end of a strip mall.
So, Best Buy will have to redo all of their stores, move all of their locations, hire all new staff, and completely change the way they do business. Oh, and why not hire an executive team that can actually pul the whole thing off while their at it?
As I said: Water is wet, Fire is hot, and Best Buy is doomed.
Your message was even longer than Mr. Windows! BORING!
Joel,
Your message is not only dull and rude, but it is also repetitive. If you don’t like to read, might I recommend you make better use of your time perusing some of the many amusing cat pictures that the internet has to offer?
Unfortunately, the people who post to cat picture sites politely suggested that Joel start perusing here.
Darn it! You’d think by now that the internet had figured out a way to deal with dull 12 year olds.
People aren’t going to Linens and Things, and then walk over to the Best Buy at the other end of a strip mall.
LnT went under a few years ago… What I’m going to miss is being able to look at a device from all angles and see it in life size.
Up here in Canada, we still have to go to Best Buy or Future Shop. Same company, one with employees on commission, the other not. Amazon is not a presence for anything other than media. We still have to physically shop. Other parts of the world are not like the USA.
I’ve been avoiding BB for years because I never liked the way their security goons “greet” you as you walk in the door. Very unpleasant, and very unwelcoming.
P.S.
Short enough for you, Joel?
BB could turn “a problem” into a win if they embraced cell phone tag shopping and matched the price that the customer showed them (with confirmation). After all, wouldn’t you want to walk out of the store with the merchandise right then knowing you got the equal of the best deal? BB could do the cost modeling and because of their volume and selection be able to make money on it.
Best Buy has a huge overhead compared to the internet retailers.
They can never match on price and turn a profit.
I haven’t been to a BB in years. Now I know why. This link shows they just don’t like customers. Even with a receipt they may not take your return/exchange if you’ve returned something in the last 90 days.
https://www.courant.com/business/custom/consumer/hc-bottom-line-best-buy-returns-20120409,0,5063368.column
Yes, they are doomed.
A relative gave my wife an Amazon.ca gift card for her birthday this year. Seeing the vast lack of everything other than books was a sobering experience. Life must be hard up there!
It must be Spring/Summer break from middle school. The trolls are around and about.
Dead on! Their prices are too high, their service sucks, their website sucks and Geek Squad really sucks.
But they have two things going for them. First, sometimes there’s no substitute for seeing something in person. I can read all the reviews in the world, but sometimes I need to touch an item before I really understand how it looks/works. That doesn’t mean I’m going to _buy_ the item from Best Buy, but it’s handy to have them around as a showroom.
Second, there are times I need something today and I can’t wait. Gotta have it, period. From that standpoint alone, brick-and-mortar retailers will never be completely obsolete.
Best Buy needs to take a long hard look at MicroCenter – we have one here. It’s about half the size of BB but they have good selection, great service and competitive prices. No music, video or appliances, just computer gear, games and software, but everyone in town swears by them.
Bethlehem Steel lasted another 30 years after your 1973 prediction of their being doomed. Hardly insightful. Now that Best Buy is on the skids, predicting their demise is not very insightful either.
BestBuy is no Circuit City, or CompUSA.
CompUSA was really a challenger to BestBuy; like Fry’s, Micro Electronics, etc.
I stopped buying _anything_ at Circuit City once they stopped carrying most everything in stock – especially the stuff that was on sale in their circulars – primarily in preference for people ordering stuff on-line and picking it up at the store (perhaps the only way to actually get merchandise other than DVDs or CDs at Circuit City for quite a long time).
For instance, I went to buy a webcam at Circuit City on a Sunday once; the store had only been opened for may be 3 hours. Webcams at the time were not very popular (one could argue they still aren’t). They were out of stock. Why? They had only received may be 5 of them despite the fact that they were advertising them as “on sale” in the circular, so they sold out fast, and they weren’t expecting to get any more throughout the rest of the sale period.
Now, perhaps management was hoping people would buy something else that wasn’t on sale instead. Me? I just walked out, and didn’t look back. After that, I only went there when I had a gift card for them that I couldn’t use elsewhere.
So Circuit City went out of business due to its own practices, not because of BestBuy, Walmart, CompUSA, or anyone else.
Now, it could probably be argued that BestBuy put CompUSA out of business, and there would probably be a very good case there. I shopped at either one, and found them quite comparable at the time. But even then, I always find a local computer store to buy cables (e.g. ethernet, usb, etc.) from as all the major stores were always overpriced for those kinds of things.
(disclosure: I work at BBY corporate)
Your analysis of our symptoms is accurate in my opinion. So much is broken here. I don’t feel its beyond repair totally, but massive change is required.
It certainly looks like not only us, but any brick and mortar retailer is doomed. I think there is a way out of it, but what’s missing, from our approach, and from most brick and mortars is morphing to a modern version of retail.
The fixes that most B&M’s are applying are simply pulling on the same old retail levers, product mix, marketing, deals, display and a litany of dusty old retail tricks.
In fact those levers are being pulled so furiously that we and others have forgotten the only differentiating factor, the most basic of ingredients to success; the customer and what is best for them.
It’s not fait accompli that Amazon will crush all B&M’s; trending that way yes, but I don’t think the physical retailer will ever go away completely. I do think it will change dramatically from what it is now, whether by deft management, evolution and survival of current retailers; or because existing B&M’s will be shuttered and replaced by others who can manage in a modern climate.
so many similar posts in so many places by folks in-house, and the corporation doesn’t steer out of the wind.
a clear sign that somebody needs to rocket off the top floor of HQ and start over.
(bonus points if you thought of Wally McCarthy’s)
is every store 40% aisles and intersections, or what? now, I like wide aisles, as I have to stand back to read the shelf cards. America is aging. you can put every bit of what is in a Best Buy store now in half the space, with rectanguler shelves and intersections, and it doesn’t have to look like Ax-Man Surplus. if you don’t have any better margins on Magnolia and other sorta-brands than Samsung and Sony, they broaden the stocking of brands. go for 12 foot ceilings in the new locations instead of 18 or 20, and you’ve cut almost 2/3 of the rental costs.
just those tricks ought to buy enough time to get the show-and-Web business fixed.
but nobody in present-day retail is going to go there. they’re indoctrinated into dead models.
true enough, there are many inside who are as frustrated, if not more so, than our customers with the company’s rudderless recent history.
It may sound crazy, but my feeling is that we should embrace the “showroom” problem. The fact that people come into the store to look is actually a positive. A positive that we turn negative by having an unintegrated and shitty .com experience, a poor pricing strategy, and just enough pushy/unhelpful/poorly trained associates to cancel out the outstanding ones.
And in my opinion, the surest sign that the ship is adrift with no captain, we actually take up floor space, DC space, labor hours, and consumer mind space with trashy, non-CE, off-brand junk like Twilight curling irons and shake weights. Can’t make it up.
Not only could our stores be better showrooms for the customer, and for us; but our stores, given a simplified and focused product mix, could operate as mini local distribution centers. Imagine if you could order from your couch and have it on your doorstep in hours.
The other problem I’ll guarantee you all B&M’s have is legacy system debt. Nothing of the above gets fixed for any physical retailer without a complete overhaul and modernization of systems.
I will say, with the recent um, “personnel changes” at HQ, along with Stephen Gillett coming as the new Chief Digital Officer (haven’t had one before; really), and Dick Schultze (founder) more present there are some positive signs. Just signs at this point, but signs of a sort I haven’t seen for years.
Regarding your “rocket off the top floor” and restart comment. You may be interested to know that Geek Squad founder and former CTO Robert Stephens recently hopped a rocket out of the company to Silicon Valley.
The one good experience I had at Best Buy was getting to see a whole row of televisions and pick the one that looked the best. Sure you can buy cheaper at Amazon and read reviews, but some things you need to SEE first before buying. So we bought a TV Plasma (yes older tech) 46″ TV for half the cost of the new LCD/LED TVs and it even looked better than those newer/better TVs. It’s worked good over the years and probably won’t need replacement for years more.
However the last time we went to BB we needed a new Microwave/Range top to replace the 1984 model in our new house (which still worked as a microwave but had a broken fan unit). We asked to see their models, selected one from the five available for the size we needed…and then were told that we would have to Internet order it and have it delivered in two weeks! So we instead looked up the same model on Amazon, bought it for 2/3 the price and had it delivered in a week.
That about sums it up for why we don’t shop there anymore.
You never need to see a television before buying it.
If the reviews are good, and the price is right, that’s good enough. When you get it into your home, with NOTHING to compare it to, it’ll look great.
There are ways to fool you at the store (screw up picture settings on cheaper TVs, put 1080p content on the expensive sets and downscale to 720p on the cheap sets, etc.). Better to keep your eyes from deceiving you ahead of time (and paying more for it).
Yes…. let’s start buying cars without test driving them and houses without ever walking into them. Sorry, but a TV’s are something that is best viewed in person as well as the previously mentioned items.
Side-by-side comparisons of TVs in their default (Store) mode is a poor way to choose. They’ll have be over-driven and have blues and reds pushed to dazzle the viewer.
“…They’ll *all* be over-drivern (blacklighting)…”
ACK! over-driven!
Hmmm… I don’t shop as much at Best Buy as I do at Future Shop, the Canadian chain that BB bought several years ago.
They operate under both banners here, and followed a very strange pattern of opening up a BB right across the street from almost every existing Future Shop. So in a market where Circuit City and CompUSA never existed, they’ve oversaturated the market on their own, and force their employees in blue BB shirts to compete with their other employees in red Future Shop shirts. Never made much sense to me.
Future Shop still seems to retain some of its pre-Best Buy character and seems like a different operation. Even though the electronics and appliance market is very competitive in my part of Canada (with at least five big and medium box competitors in different categories), about 8 times out of 10 I’ll find the best deal at Future Shop. My fridge, dishwasher, washer, dryer and TV all come from there, and I helped my Mom buy a washer and TV through them as well.
That said, I have started to find alternatives for pure electronics goods. My laptop came from Walmart, my DVD player from Amazon.ca, many of my PC accessories from TigerDirect and DirectCanada. FutureShop and BestBuy both have really let the computer end of things slip. Their clerks are often woefully ignorant and will look at you blankly if you ask the simplest tech questions, and their range of accessories like mice, external storage and is limited and, as you say, overpriced.
I read the article and I think to myself how Currys & PC World in the UK are going the same way. Although they effectively merged their business, killing of the Dixons brand too. So it looks more like Best Buy in the stores.
Interesting point – Best Buy tied up with Carphonewarehouse in the UK to try and launch Best Buy here. It failed.
In the UK HMV and Waterstones will be next. Simply because you can buy music, films, and books significantly cheaper online. That the premium to have the product on the day, from the shop, is too much.
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I use Best Buy when I need something immediately. My PC blew its power supply, and it was nice to be able to grab a replacement on my way to work to get back up and running ASAP. I could have saved $10-15 on-line, but the convenience (and no shipping) was worth it.
The other good experience I had was having them install an iPod adapter in my car. Their bid was significantly cheaper than other places, and service was fast and competent.
But their sales people aren’t particularly helpful or knowledgeable, and the return process is painful compared to say Home Depot.
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I avoid Best Buy as much as I can. Last time I was there, I had checked their web site for a wireless phone battery. The price was $10. I got to the store and the price was $17. They looked it up on the web after I complained and sold it to me for $10, but if I hadn’t known, they would have overcharged me for it.
Bad business practice! I’m sure at $10 they still made a good profit on the battery.
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The big problem with the loss of B&M stores is that it means the ONLY way you can shop is online. And if you’re trying to limit your shopping to purchases you can do with cash or check, and not relying on credit, then you will soon find yourself unable to buy anything other than groceries. Then again, if it comes to that, and the only thing I can buy is the daily bare eseentials, I might end up saving some money after all, since there won’t be any place to spend it.
Yeah, right. Until the first time I have to pick up office supplies at OverpricedDepot…..
I’m a little late reading this blog about refurbished, especially some of the posts, but got to say… everything here is so great and so true. As someone who’s originally from the area, I get a chuckle out of many things here.
So……. Is EBay the next Best Buy?
Looking forward to a good deal more upcoming things to read here, do you maintain a Rss feed?.
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Big box electronics and entertainment retailers have notoriously short half lives. I go all the way back to PlayBack, The Electronic Playground! When Best Buy opened their big draw was really cheap prices on pre-recorded audio cassettes. They’re running out of subsequent gimmick-leads. They would have died anyway, without the Internet. TigerDirect is the next BestBuy. If only they could UPS refridgerators.
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I worked on a team that built the first Bestbuy.com. We had a small group of excellent architects and program managers who cranked out a great core site. They then handed it over to 200 contractors from India, who ended up charging 4x our bid to build the site (but were cheaper hourly).
Best Buy is run by finance, and you can feel it in every interaction.
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The only constant is change… It is good that newcomers are welcomed in the market of selling products. I believe BestBuy would keep a fair share of the market, so I am not really worried about them. Nevertheless, I do like BestBuy. I never had a single problem with them. However, they really need to update their stock and to overthink product price range.
Actually, we have created a website, which helps other online stores to sell products. We deliver the best experience in product search for users, by providing them with really simple way to find a good products for their needs and then telling them, where to buy these products cheaper at http://suggesters.org/. I hope you would like our website:) And if you give us comments on what would you like to see – that would be really awesome:)
they deserve to DIE..They suck and always did I never understood why anyone went there more than ONCE….HAHAHAHAHA die jerks
Hello! I’ve been reading your website for some time now and finally got the bravery to go ahead and give you a shout out from Lubbock Texas! Just wanted to say keep up the great work!
[…] Buy is in trouble you know. It’s in the news all the time. I wrote a big column about it myself last year. Same store sales have suffered, corporate employees are being laid off, […]
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Best Buy is Canada’s fastest-growing specialty retailer and e-tailer of consumer electronics. https://www.marilynmore.ca/ and https://www.nwtlc.ca/