Bye Bye British Best Buy?
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
Electronics giant Best Buy only arrived in the United Kingdom 18 months ago but Carphone Warehouse is already preparing to shut all of the stores that have popped up around the UK in the last year and a half.
When Carphone Warehouse and Best Buy teamed up to form the joint venture that was Best Buy Europe, the original plan was to have 200 shops across Europe by 2013, however, that is no longer on the cards. In fact, just 11 had been opened by June of this year, at which point the roll-out was officially halted.
The newspaper yesterday reported that CW would confirm its decision to pull the plug on Best Buy UK when it announced its half-year results. The news was confirmed today, with Carphone Warehouse saying the focus would now be on selling more goods at the 805 Carphone Warehouse UK stores owned by Best Buy and the 1,648 Phone House locations in Europe.
The shutting down of 11 locations puts 1,100 jobs at risk, though Carphone is hoping to relocate the majority of these people to other parts of the company. The stores have so far managed to rack up losses of £83m, with further half-year losses of £35m expected in the near future.
Will you miss Best Buy UK? Let us know in the comments below!
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Never even saw one, so no.
Didn't even know they were over here. Clearly they have made a misjudgement in the market, either with regards to where they place themselves or their timing. Launching a new business in the middle of a recession is not a great idea.
Got one in Purley Way, cheapest store in the area - possibly why they're in the red.
Didn't even know they were over here. Clearly they have made a misjudgement in the market, either with regards to where they place themselves or their timing. Launching a new business in the middle of a recession is not a great idea.
Best Buy in the UK...WTF?!?!?
I have to agree that I didn't even realise they where open for business in the UK!
Whenever I've read people talking about best buy I always assumed they were talking about the US stores.
I can only assume from that one observation that their marketing must have been a complete failure as if I didn't know they had opened stores in the UK I'd have to also assume others didn't in which case it wouldn't matter how good a deal you could get from them because inevitably if you don't know they exist you won't check their prices and deals.
I also have to say that I've never seen their UK branches listed in any price search or product search hit responses via Google and other sites so can again only think that they can only blame their marketing for this failure.
Let's hope they have a massive fire sale but why didn't they lower their prices to get sales and make profits. Or is this too simple?
Best Buy UK marketing has been feeble, when they launched over here the only reason I knew was because it was mentioned on a US site. I can't remember seeing them on any price comparison sites or any TV ads either
I also never knew Best Buy were in the UK. No wonder this has happened.
I went in the Enfield store the day after it opened and very quickly walked out again - prices too high, even higher than PC World