Photo by Amber N. Wiley
The Prince of Petworth is getting all alarmist today with a rumor that the Best Buy store at the DC USA complex in Columbia Heights is on the chopping block.
He wrote earlier today:
A couple of weeks ago Best Buy announced it would be closing 50 big box stores around the country in 2013. While the list of stores had not been released a reader shares some scuttlebutt that Columbia Heights’ location in DC USA (14th and Irving St, NW) is on the list.
If accurate, do you think this would be a big loss for the DC USA mall or do you do most of your electronics shopping in Target anyway?
OK, he’s right that the big-box electronics retailer is planning on dumping 50 stores in the coming year as it tries to fix its struggling business. But is the Columbia Heights store already marked for death?
It’s unclear, but just for good measure, we checked with Best Buy. So far the only stores the company has announced it is closing are five locations in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and one in San Antonio, Texas.
“We will announce details about additional, specific store locations and timing for closings as they are finalized,” a Best Buy spokesperson wrote in an email.
Best Buy plans to transform some of the targeted branches into “Connected Stores,” a smaller format that focuses more on computers and mobile devices with a greater number of display models for customer testing. (Yeah, that sounds familiar.)
But Best Buy is trying to figure out many things to right its future, not least of which is finding a new CEO after the resignation of Brian J. Dunn, who stepped down yesterday just weeks after introducing the big reorganization plan. The company said it is investigating Dunn’s “personal conduct.”
Getting back to the prince’s doomsaying for the Columbia Heights store, there is a case to be made for giving it the axe. Thing is, even though Best Buy still controls about 20 percent of the consumer electronics market, it is being diminished by something retail experts call showrooming, according to American Public Media’s Marketplace. Many customers at Best Buy are browsers only. They’ll find the television, computer or home-audio system they fancy, but rather than get it in the store, they’ll find a lower price from an online retailer. All this undercutting is forcing Best Buy to reconsider it’s big, rather impersonal style. But online catalogues can’t mimic the tangible nature of product testing, so focusing on a friendlier in-store customer experience and excising some of its unnecessary bulk could allow Best Buy to simultaneously lower its prices and remain competitive, Matt Arnold, a consumer analyst with Edward Jones, told Marketplace.
Sound about right for a big-box retailer?
