Best Buy Figures Out Key To Retail Success: Competitive Prices, Good Service, Apple Watches

(frankieleon)

We don’t cheer on the demise of companies here at Consumerist: when a company appears on this site repeatedly, it’s because we want them to be better. Best Buy used to be a frequent subject of posts here, but now they aren’t. Americans haven’t all abandoned the retailer: it’s actually doing well, with its mini-store concept paying off. What’s coming up soon for the company? More Apple mini-stores.

Specifically, the company has become an Apple authorized reseller. They’ve sold Apple products for years, but weren’t an official location for service for Apple products. Now they will be, though whether you want freshly-trained Best Buy employees cracking open your Apple Watch is a whole other question.

Yes, your Apple Watch: the chain started with a pilot program, but announced today that they’ll first spread the wrist computers out to a few hundred stores, then roll it out to every full-sized Best Buy store.

Overall, Best Buy is succeeding by…getting back to the basics of what retail is supposed to be. “our strategy of offering advice, service and convenience at competitive prices is paying off,” Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly said in a statement accompanying the quarterly results.

We thought that these were basic rules of retail, but Best Buy lost its way for a while, instead making up its own rules about not letting any computer out the door without being “optimized” by Geek Squad. Now they’ve learned their lesson, and offering something as simple as price-matching is helpful in de

Best Buy Posts Surprise Sales Rise; Shares Jump [Reuters]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist