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]

Geek Squad, the FBI informants you pay to search through your stuff.

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]

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.

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.

[catfish1957]

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.

Same here, but since I like Apples I got to shell out a little more.  Like X-Files......   Trust No One.

And since I have had PC's for 32 years I need something a little bigger than a stick.  I use a "disconnected" 1 Tb portable drive for LT storage.

[SirLinksALot]

SOME THOUGHTS:

1. Best Buy price matches Amazon’s prices.  A great feature of Best Buy. is this ---the company WILL MATCH the Amazon price.
Buyers can “kick the tires”, and buy the product immediately without having to pay for shipping or waiting days for the item to arrive.

2. When it comes to high dollar items, Most people want to actually see it/feel it/measure it, not simply get a feel by seeing the item online.

3. When people shell out a thousand bucks or more for a flat screen TV, they pick it up and handle it themselves, because they WILL be careful with it. It's THEIR money.

They don't want to  trust a USPS goober to not throw this Amazon package on their porch.


4. Best Buy has something Amazon does not (yet) have -- THE GEEK SQUAD SERVICE. Loads of people don’t know how to maintain their computers, and will simply call geek squad to come fix it for them.

[truth_seeker]

Best Buy effectively subleased a significant fraction of space, to an appliance store called "Pacific Sales." We have purchased such appliances there.

On TVs Best buy is price competitive, and I have bought some there.

Finally on cellular phones, BB  has the major firms in house, and we have bought from them.

We have a multitude of choices. Fry's, Micro Center, Walmart, but BB has the best merchandizing,, the best website, etc.

Plus their sales people are salaried, not commission. I hope they survive. 

[Cripplecreek]

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.

I have no interests in the secrets of others.

A few months ago a neighbor's check stub blew over here abd caught up in the fence. I looked at it long enough to know what it was and where it belonged. I took it over to his wife and told her that I'm just not curious about that sort of thing.