Best Buy closing 50 stores.

[Exterous]

walmart sells their own model numbers with crappier components than what is sold in best buy

And walmart and target carry a good collection of other high margin items likes clothes and dont give the same giant swaths of floor/warehouse space to low margin electronics

 

[paulney]

it looks like theyre closing the stores in the ghetto neighborhoods like east palo alto

The postal address may be East Palo Alto, but don't let that trick you into thinking it was in some ghetto-central. The plaza itself has been transformed into a respectable shopping destination - you have giant Ikea on one side, Home Depot on the other, and in between you have Nordstrom Rack, Office Depot, Sports Authority, Mi Pueblo. Best Buy can't pull it off in there not because of the lack of customers, but for the same reason the Good Guys (building they are now occupying) could not.

 

[rise]

I find it ironic that people take issue with Best Buy not price matching Amazon at the same time they take issue with "only" having 1 person to tend to customers in an isle. How many people on the floor do Amazon have telling you about all the features of the wares they're peddling? 0. Zip. Nada. They put up a page with some info on it and they're done. They have no such overhead from having to fill a floor with employees that can deal with people one on one. That is precisely the reason Amazon is able to undercut them on prices they can't afford to price match.

Microcenter competes well with amazon, newegg etc...

 

[Meghan54]

No, it's because it is only the partial truth. For normal products, the model numbers are different because they want to eliminate price matching and the vendor does not want to deal with companies bitching about special pricing. HP used to do this years ago with Sam's Club. They had the HP 722C printer, but at Sam's club it was HP 720C. They were the same printer, but they sold the 720C for $50 less.

At the moment, I work for one of walmart's biggest suppliers (trust me, it is not a good thing). Stuff may be different model numbers, but they are all the same product found in different stores. They only time you may get a different product is when you get those mysterious black friday models....you know, the models that show up with no history of being sold ever. Those models could be little differences from taking away certain accessories to something big like taking an electronic function away.

While it may be true quite a few "normal" products are indeed the same in WM as other stores, some products tend to lend themselves to be cheapened in their construction, giving WM the leverage to request a lower purchase price vs. BB.



Case in point.....having worked on numerous HP/Compaq computers purchased from WM over the last 12-15 years, early on and into the last decade, I noticed distinct internal build differences between the same exact model numbers of computers sold in WM vs. BB/CUSA/CC.


As the model ended in wm for the WalMart version of a model while the BB/CC/et al purchased models would end in another pair of letters, it was easy on HP's/Compaq's website to look up parts, which I often had to do or would do while looking up drivers (the owners invariably lost the original CD...)


And while the BB/CC model would be built with at least name recognizable components (motherboard by Asus, for example, or hard drives by Seagate or WE, memory from Samsung/Crucial/Kingston, etc., etc.), the WM purchased models would have off-brand and sometimes unrecognizable brands of parts, such as TriGem motherboards, hard drives from unknown Chinese "makers", memory from unknown makers....that is iff the memory was actually labeled by the manufacturer for anything other than capacity, speed, and the HP/Compaq part number.


And I saw this more than a few times.....cheaper components in a WM model when compared to an identical BB model of the same computer. I can only imagine that the guts of a TV can be as easily compromised and the consumer wouldn't be able to tell, at least initially.


Of course, this is just what I found on HP's website and from what I've seen inside them, but compromises between the two most definitely made the WM product different.


And also consider the story about Snapper mowers and its parent company, Simplicity. WM used to sell Snapper mowers in WM and had great success. After all, Snapper is a well regarded brand of mowers and they moved a ton through WM.


But WM demanded a lower purchase price every year and the margin left to Simplicity per unit was getting so slim it was just above break even. So, the CEO of Simplicity went to WM's headquarters to drop distributing his Snapper mowers through WM.


During the discussions, the WM CEO suggested that to boost margins for Simplicity on the WM sold Snappers, the WM version's construction could be outsourced to a cheap Chinese manufacturer, and with that combined with using cheaper parts, the margins would increase for Simplicity and WM could continue to sell the Snapper name, since that's all WM really wanted was the Snapper brand on some sort of mower. (Snapper mowers are all built in the U.S., btw.)


Thankfully, the Simplicity CEO didn't fall for it....something about the brand meaning something.


We won't talk about the look-a-like Levi denim jeans WM sells. Look almost exactly like those in other stores, except the denim's of lower quality and thinner, zippers are lighter and cheaper, etc.


But the upshot is, there can and are differences between some WM sold items and the "identical" item sold in BB or by Amazon, etc. And I'm sure with paper towels, Purina dog food, Land 'o' Lakes butter, Tropicana orange juice, Folger's coffee, and a wide host of other products, WM does indeed sell the exact same thing as other stores. But in some things....not exactly.

 

[alent1234]

No, it's because it is only the partial truth. For normal products, the model numbers are different because they want to eliminate price matching and the vendor does not want to deal with companies bitching about special pricing. HP used to do this years ago with Sam's Club. They had the HP 722C printer, but at Sam's club it was HP 720C. They were the same printer, but they sold the 720C for $50 less.

At the moment, I work for one of walmart's biggest suppliers (trust me, it is not a good thing). Stuff may be different model numbers, but they are all the same product found in different stores. They only time you may get a different product is when you get those mysterious black friday models....you know, the models that show up with no history of being sold ever. Those models could be little differences from taking away certain accessories to something big like taking an electronic function away.

years ago when i was interested in this stuff a lot more i read a lot of forums and reviews and this is what wal mart does. TV's was just the one example i gave only because the LCD panel tech was advancing fairly fast and new generations of factories being built every 2 years or so. wal mart would sell TV's cheaper than Best Buy but they would be either the brand X that were around 2003 and 2004. or as people figured out they would ask samsung, LG or others to build them special models with crappy panels from AU Optronics who were known as the worst panel maker.

 

[Saint Nick]

We have at least five in my area alone...too many. One would be enough.
Well, based on the list above, soon it will be five.

 

[ColdFusion718]

these guys seem pleased by that news

This picture is from the improv everywhere flash mob.

 

[lxskllr]

Thankfully, the Simplicity CEO didn't fall for it....something about the brand meaning something.

Holy shit! Where did they get this relic from?! That's not how business is run. You whore out your name to anyone who'll buy it, and then get a new name when you run the old one into the ground. That keeps your next quarter looking good for the gambl... erm, investors.

 

[Fingolfin269]

If the one they're closing in Antioch, TN (Nashville) is any indication of the quality and/or need of the other 49 stores then I fully understand why they're closing them down. The TN one is no longer needed because of other locations that have opened in surrounding areas. It used to be the only one and is now in an area where no one wants to go. For anything. Other than potentially getting robbed.

 

[Regs]

They could probably make a killing if they went with something like amazon prime. Just in this case, if they had it in your local store, it would be delivered same day. If not in your local store, than free 2 day shipping. They would of course have to be slightly more competative on price. They could also give thier prime account members 1 year service plans for free and extended plan discounts. Prime members could also recieve an in store discount that brought items more inline with internet prices.

Hah, I never really understood that from when a salesmen asks if they could order it for you. The whole point of me going to the store is for the availability. If I wanted to order it and wait, I would have never left the house. The problem with most of these stores is they have limited space and distribution, so they can only carry high margin products like, dare I say, gold plated HDMI cables.

 

[Regs]

"
Brian Dunn quit abruptly amid an investigation of personal misconduct. The Minneapolis Star Tribune and other media have reported the allegations involved misuse of company assets in relation to an inappropriate relationship with a female employee. "

So basically he wined and dined a women with company money. Not sure how this reflects on his management skills, but obviouosly not very ethical.

 

[brandonb]

I can only comment on 2 stores.

Rogers, MN - It's a nice store in a developing area. However, it's one town away from Maple Grove, MN, where there is another Best Buy (5 miles away) Which is in an already developed upper middle class area. I don't know who decided this store should be built, but it wasn't too smart. It's like putting 2 McDonalds on opposites sides of a street corner.

Brooklyn Park, MN - It's a block away from Brookdale which is a mall that went bankrupt due to it being too close to the ghetto. I'm sure the only people shopping here are shoplifting... Long overdue here. Which again, is about 5 minutes away from Maple Grove, MN.

So 3 Best Buys within 10 minutes of driving time. No wonder 2 are closing and the one in the middle of the three locations is staying.

 

[lokiju]

That's the reason I love Dallas - 3x Fry's (the 4th isn't that far away) and a Microcenter

And why I love the (north) ATL!

2 Frys within a 20 min drive of each other and a MicroCenter in between them.

When the Frys in Alpharetta opened up years ago now I lived about a quarter mile from it and was there all the damn time.

Now I work just about as far from the same store and have been there maybe 1 time in the past year.

Can't beat Amazon most of the time and if you're looking for a deal on something specific it's just to easy and no reason not to search on sites like SlickDeals first to see if anyone has a deal at the moment.