General Category > Economy/Business
Why the grim reaper of retail hasn't come to claim Best Buy
SirLinksALot:
SOURCE: LOS ANGELES TIMES
URL: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-agenda-best-buy-20170717-htmlstory.html
By James F. Peltz and Jack Flemming
Five years ago Best Buy Co. looked like a retail dinosaur, another victim of e-commerce juggernaut Amazon.com and other online sellers.
The big-box electronics chain was suffering dwindling sales and profits due in good part to “showrooming,” when shoppers would come in to a Best Buy store to check out televisions, computers and other items in person, and then buy them at cheaper prices at Amazon or elsewhere online.
Best Buy also was struggling with executive turmoil and facing a buyout threat from a major stockholder. The chain in 2012 named a new chief executive, Hubert Joly, but the Frenchman came from the hospitality field and had no retail experience.
His appointment stunned analysts, with one saying that fixing Best Buy was “a herculean task even for an accomplished retail executive.”
But Joly has proved up to the task so far. Under his turnaround plan, Best Buy has rebounded to remain one major U.S. retailer that’s holding its own in the face of Amazon’s relentless growth and the conventional retail industry’s slump.
Best Buy “came out the other side successfully to defend itself against Amazon,” said Peter Keith, an analyst with the investment firm Piper Jaffray & Co.
As more consumers shift to online shopping, other brick-and-mortar retailers have closed thousands of stores in shopping malls and elsewhere in the last year. A few have filed for bankruptcy protection, including rival electronics chain RadioShack.
Best Buy still operates 1,600 outlets — including 143 in California, its biggest market — and Joly views the stores as “a great asset” even as Best Buy also moves increasingly to online sales.
“We don’t see ourselves as a brick-and-mortar retailer, we’re a multichannel retailer” that combines the stores, Best Buy’s website and its phone app to boost sales, Joly said in an interview. And he’s planning to expand Best Buy’s services, including its Geek Squad support arm, to generate more product sales.
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driftdiver:
Geek Squad, the FBI informants you pay to search through your stuff.
mirraflake:
--- Quote from: driftdiver on July 18, 2017, 04:34:00 pm ---Geek Squad, the FBI informants you pay to search through your stuff.
--- End quote ---
I buy cheap $300 computers and back them on occasion. Save my pics on a stick et.. If the computer goes out I smash the hard drive and clunk it into the dumpster.
A friend of a friend who is a computer repairman confessed at one time he nibs through every ones computer.
ConstitutionRose:
--- Quote from: mirraflake on July 18, 2017, 04:45:47 pm ---I buy cheap $300 computers and back them on occasion. Save my pics on a stick et.. If the computer goes out I smash the hard drive and clunk it into the dumpster.
A friend of a friend who is a computer repairman confessed at one time he nibs through every ones computer.
--- End quote ---
I'm sorry. I'd have him neither as a friend nor a repairman. If I found out one of my techs did that I would fire them on the spot.
catfish1957:
I buy plenty from Amazon, but big ticket important items like PC's and TV's?....... Like a car I want a test drive.
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