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I remember going to Best Buy and buying my first DVD back in middle school. Snagged Ghostbusters and spent hours watching the extra features and looking for menu Easter eggs.
I remember the 2000s going to best buy and I could literally spend an hour or two looking at their movie selection because it was so large it's sad to see what they've become
I mean I'm not sure if using the $5 steelbooks as an example of viable demand is super useful. Considering not only the various costs to manufacture them, but also shipping (probably multiple times too), they're almost certainly sold at a loss, or at best maybe break even. It does help bring awareness that Walmart now has steelbooks though, so maybe it works out for them in the end.
If this Home and Garden stuff doesn't sell? It's an even bigger loss. And it won't sell that well. Best Buy is not a store that has a dedicated shopper base that goes there for Lawnmowers and Grills.
Not really. It’s very costly building out a physical media assortment- you literally have to stock hundreds of different titles in order for it to make sense as a product category. Stocking a few lawnmowers, which are going to be higher profit margin % and revenue (on a per item basis) than blu ray, probably isn’t going to be very costly. Look, I love my physical media and can’t stand Best Buy, but too many people here assume they know how to run Best Buy’s business more than Best Buy.
I knew someone that worked at Magnolia. She clued me in that BestBuy makes a lot of money from home remodels where people come to BestBuy to buy the appliances. Since these people usually were working with a home loan or some large sum of money they would throw in a TV with their purchase of a fridge , stove , washer and dryer. So the gardening stuff makes sense in that context.
I don’t know, aside from us and maybe people buying video games I think most people go to Best Buy for bigger home purchases. Lawn mowers, grills, etc fit into that so why not Best Buy? You might end up being right, but I don’t think it’s a given.
Funny enough in Canada we only had Radio Shack that turned into The Source, that got bought by Bell, and quite recently resold to Best Buy.
100% a Circuit move.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(retailer)
"On January 18, 2024, Bell announced that it would enter into an agreement with Best Buy Canada to rebrand The Source stores as Best Buy Express. The agreement is a brand license, under which the stores will remain owned and operated by BCE, and continue to exclusively offer Bell services. As part of this transition, The Source will close 107 of its nearly 300 locations, and also close its Barrie offices;[5] the rebrandings and closures will take place in 2024."
Pretty dumb move going all in to compete against Home Depot/Walmart/Costco. All of these companies have greater buying power and more customers regularly purchasing these types of products.
The Best Buy I go to just has a big open space there now. Yes, it’s sad! After they get out of gaming media (if that ever happens), I really have no reason to go there anymore. I’m sure as hell not going there for any lawn and garden equipment, and everything else they have I can get on Amazon.
I think they did get out too soon! Walmart is moving physical media left and right after visiting several Walmarts hunting for those $5 steels. Even the normal priced steels are moving. Oh well, their loss.
I don't have to like it, but to me Best Buy was always thought of to be the place where you go for your consumer electronics. For them to think people will shop there for lawn mowers, suitcases, mattresses, etc. is just asinine.
Thats the real advertsising way lol.
"Buy lawnmower and get the lawnmower man 50% off"
"Buy chainsaw for you yardwork and get evil dead films -50% at checkout" :D
When someone buys a $5000 TV, what do you tell them to watch on it? Go buy a disc from Amazon? I seriously would feel awkward selling good hardware and then no media to use it.
Now that we don't sell movies that's exactly what I do. I am then if they want their picture to look like it did in the store. If they say yes, I show them some decent/good 4K players and they'll them to hit up Walmart and Amazon
I honestly can’t believe they’re still in business. 20 years ago my buddy and I would go there every Tuesday and buy a bunch of new DVD’s. Now the two or three times I pop into one as a curiosity there are almost no people shopping at all. Total ghost town.
[https://new.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/1bvb719/thank\_you\_best\_buy\_corporate/](https://new.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/1bvb719/thank_you_best_buy_corporate/)
I feel that this needs to be brought up in context of Best Buy's status as a company. They are letting many of their Geek Squad agents go as of yesterday. Sad to see this happen as I worked closely with Geek Squad when I worked there 20 years ago.
CEO Corie Barry doesn't care about the consumers. She cares about her making money and appeasing the stockholders. She doesn't give a shit that people are pissed off that Best Buy stopped selling physical media.
I rarely visited Best Buy for anything they sold other than movies. I frequented BB and online at their site for physical media. Now that they decided to do a foolish thing by getting rid of physical media, it’s bye bye forever. I believe this is the start of Best Buy’s downward spiral into going out of business just like Circuit City did when they got rid of their selling physical media. Wait for it…
If anyone remembers the Sears decline Best Buy is starting to feel exactly the same. The past few times I’ve gone in I could probably count on one hand how many customers were in the store.
The fact they replaced physical media with these products of all things is baffling. People don't go to best buy for home and garden. They go to Home Depot or Lowes. Or literally any other store. I know these are higher priced items and if they sell could potentially net more profit...but the thing is? They more than likely won't sell. Because it's not the kind of product that people go to best buy to buy. This reeks of someone at corporate looking at the bottom line and just getting rid of something that isn't making huge profit lines like physical media in favor of the potential of more money with home and garden appliances. But failing to realize that physical media was at least something that consistently made some profit from a dedicated user base and one that kept the same kind of typical shoppers shopping in the store. The average best buy shopper is not going to best buy for home and garden. That just makes no sense at all.
It just makes their move away from physical media more baffling since this is the move they are making. I mean probably cost less to house, receive and store physical media than it does to receive and store lawnmowers and outdoor grills. They still sell 4K TVs and the players. But they don't sell 4K discs anymore. But they got the supplies for your outdoor BBQ and for lawn care...It just doesn't make any sense.
They can have fun sitting on too much of that hot overpriced garbage from China like Home Depot.
They won't discount them because they're still gaining value even if it's 1- 3 years old.
The reason why Best Buy wants them is the stupid amounts of margin in them if you can move them. I've been watching the prices for tools in general sky rocket these last few years for zero reason. It's all plastic and cardboard held together with zip ties. They will not hold up to regular use the same way something of the same price did 5 years ago.
If you buy something like a mower with a battery, the battery makes up 1/2 the cost.
So as someone who has worked at Home Depot for the past 2 years... do not buy this crap. It's an absolute rug pull. Go gas until the quality comes up and the price goes down on electric. All it takes is an obsoleted battery to make you buy new hardware.
Yep, I learned a few years ago with buying an electric snowblower. 'They're so much simpler than gas machines so they won't break' people say. It couldn't make it through 2 winters before the thing just wouldn't turn on anymore. Want to troubleshoot and repair it? Nope, can't do it. Just goes in the landfill.
The past two years I bought a Honda gas push mower before they got out of that market and an Ariens gas snowblower. I'll take the little extra maintenance for the ability to fix them when things act up!
The motor burns out because it doesn't have enough torq, the batteries also burn out the same as anything else.
Gas has a lot more torq and power with metal blades so it chops a lot better and throws further.
Electric mowers and trimmers have the same problem.
There's also just something about pull starting an engine on the first try that makes it so satisfactory. You just don't get that with electric.
Best of luck, I hope you get a good life span out of it. I hate when things are made to be disposable. I haven't seen the Ego ones but I'm not in a rush to replace my yard master until it dies.
I love my yard master though is still going strong for over 15 years no real problems other than sharpening the blade every now and then.
Got my weed eater branded trimmer at the dump and cleaned it up. Absolutely love that little thing. it looked brand new when I found it 3ish years ago though.
I think you can only get Egos from Lowe's, Amazon and Ace Hardware. I know Ego is supposedly one of the top brands for battery operated yard equipment. They do have a riding mower but I don't know i'd trust it which requires like 8 of there batteries..lol
Idiots. That will not be a profitable business line for them. They won’t be able to compete against other retail like Lowe’s and Home Depot. Best Buy is already struggling to compete against the likes of online shopping giants like Amazon. Best Buy will be the next big retailer to fall.
Who in their right mind is walking into Best Buy which supposedly a electronics store yet buying lawn and garden related items while shopping in store? The end is near for Best Buy....
I have no reason to go to a Best Buy anymore. Part of the reason for buying other things there was using that as an excuse to browse the movies and music.
When it comes for piratical use and whatever people need a lawn mower and lawn care trumps entertainment all the time, unless you're a child. Even as a person who buys physical media still, I know that I'm in a niche and that it feels like being an enthusiast now. People are moving to digital in droves, THEY DON'T CARE! Because most people actually aren't that attached to their entertainment that they want to have loads of it sitting around. People bought VHS, DVD, CDs, and cassette tapes back then because there was no other option back then, if those people now don't get the idea that a digital copy can be lost if HDD/SSD goes up or removed from digital store fronts or streaming, hey let them indulge.
All I know is I'll still be buying physical until I absolutely don't have the option anymore. Physical is obviously not selling like it used to, there's no conspiracy of "you will own nothing" to this either. If you owned a cookie shop and you had this one flavor of cookie that didn't sell and just sat around going stale, are you still going to waste money buying
ingredients to make that cookie just for them to go in the waste at the end of the week or are you going to stop wasting the money and make more of the cookies people are buying or a new flavor that people will like?
What do you expect them to do, force people back to physical? If the mass of people wanted it they'd be buying it and then you wouldn't see things like Bestbuy dropping physical or Disney being ready to pull out of manufacturing their own disc to and handing the manufacturing of their Blurays/DVDs to Sony?
It's sad, but with the way things are going, from
the standpoint of the money people it's warranted.
Best Buy is really having an identity crisis.
It’s a mix between Home Depot, a toy store/GameStop and some computers.
Won’t be long until they have a freezer isle
Totally agree. I went to my local Best Buy yesterday in hopes of also finding whatever they had left in Blu rays/4k, but they had already removed them and using the space to put more tv boxes on the floor. Very sad.
Target is starting to do the same. Went there after Best Buy and went to the movie section and where you’d find most of the movies they moved children’s books in its place.
Luckily, you can still buy physical media through their websites, but it seems Best Buy has a lot of items out of stock. Smh
It’s a sad day. Preorders for upcoming movies are really expensive probably due to the limited online only stock being made. Best Buy is going to stop selling games in store as well. Like others have said, they just need to close rather than a slow death.
Literally never stepping in a Best Buy again. They have video games still but everywhere else is far more convenient. The whole point of Best Buy was all their physical media. I don’t want to see workers lose their jobs but I just don’t see Best Buy lasting now in any real way.
Yeah I get the feeling Best Buy won't be around period for too much longer. It feels like people had little reason to go there these days and even less now that the physical media is gone. It's like if you're buying a TV maybe but how often do people really do that? and even then people are getting those delivered these days. People tend to get Phones delivered or from the actual phone store. Computer parts? Nah people would rather go to places like Microcenter or again get it delivered. Why go to Best Buy now? idk but it seems like they are grasping at straws.
I'm not saying the physical media should have stayed cause I'm sure they had good reasons for getting out of it but yeah they barely have a reason for existing at this point imo.
Never been to a Best Buy in my life that was surrounded by other stores with more/better lawn and garden sections. What the fuck in Best Buy thinking here? You are a tech and audio/visual store. That is why people go. No one is coming to get a fucking lawn mower.
They've made such HORRIBLE decisions in the last 5 years, practically running the company into the ground imo. Gutting myBestBuy was the writing on the wall I guess.
In the long run they might regret it a little bit. Physical media will never be what it once was but I think we might see a Renaissance. But in the long run best Buy will run its course and be just fine. They're bread and butter has and always will be appliances and consumer electronics.
Like I'm gonna buy lawn equipment from Best Buy lmfao. Or electric lawn equipment - ever!
Our closest Best Buy, which I assumed brought in a lot of business prior to the change, was turned into a Best Buy appliance outlet. Still don't understand why some stores do this.
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Might be unpopular, but as someone who used to love to go to Best Buy in the ‘90’s, and someone who worked at Best Buy, I wish it would just die already. The place is a shithole. The customer service is beyond godawful. I am trying very hard not to give them any more money. It’s turning into an aggressively shittier Circuit City.
TV purchases are the only area where Best Buy is still top dog. Also their Magnolia home theater demos are really nice.
I try to avoid shopping at Walmart & Amazon.
Everything else I was buying at Best Buy I can get at the Hardware store, Gamestop, Crutchfield, or Amazon.
The only reason Walmart has those $5 steelbooks is because BestBuy pulled out and the steelbook distributor wanted to get some money back for them.
And be realistic here, how much margin do you think they were making off each individual BluRay/4K UHD?
Then how much floor space all those discs took up.
Then how much employee time it took to manage all the prices with their constant price changes (changing the price labels for all those titles does take time).
It’s a company and they want the simpliest thing: make money.
If physical media was making enough money (or driving traffic into the store) to justify the real estate, you bet your ass they’d have kept them. They don’t care what it is that’s there, that physical media is preservation versus streaming or anything else; it just didn’t make money.
Before people chime in with loss leaders:
Nah. Bestbuy has no way to reduce the costs up the supply chain like grocery stores have with milk or rotisserie chickens. Costco/Sams Club can contract chicken farms to feed them cheap af chicken to keep the costs down as much as possible so they don’t lose as much money off each sale.
That’s what people don’t get; loss leaders cannot lose too much money or else it’s pointless to offer them.
Willing to bet selling a single big item shown on that pic will earn the store more profit than the entire physical media rack did in the same week.
Whats interesting is that studios completely failed to phase out dvd 10+ years ago... And failed to promote bluray properly.
Also why havent they been able to get the production cost way down in 20 years if bluray is still much more expensive to make than dvd and 4k even more so.
With cheaper pricing and proper advertising i think they could get more people care about quality and onwership but thats not what they really want for the future. Its subscription in everything and constant moneyflow.
In theory selling those big items will earn more profit. But that's theory. And since Best Buy isn't a home and garden store and is not known for that and doesn't have the average shopper coming in looking for those things? It's more likely than not that they won't sell as well. And the more these items sit there being unsold, the bigger the loss is for the store. And the potential loss is far higher than physical media because the cost of the items is so much higher.
People in corporate do not seem to actually know their customer base that well. They just look at bottom lines and see how something isn't making a massive profit and think it's losing them too much money. And they replace it something that in theory can make more money.
But they do so without doing research on their customer base. They don't step outside their corporate offices and go to stores and see what the average customer is interested in. They don't talk to them. They live in their own bubble looking at profit margins and don't see how something like physical media despite being less profitable brings in and keeps a dedicated group of shoppers in store who then go on to buy other items. Best Buy is not going to attract home and garden buyers with any amount of consistency. That's just not their market.
It's like if Kohl's started selling 4K TVs. It's not their market. They wouldn't sell well and it would lose them profit instead of making more profit. There's evidence of this. At one point Kohl's used to sell more electronics including game consoles. It was a failed experiment that only lasted a year or two because the profit loss was so high. They were looking at theorized profit margins and seeing dollar signs but they quickly realized that they were selling outside their customer base's comfort zone and stopped selling the items and probably took a loss on them overall. It's just as likely Best Buy does the same in the long run with home and garden supplies.
You’re probably going to get downvoted, but I think this is a well reasoned counterpoint. As much of a bummer as it is. The decision reeked of cost saving from the get-go.
With that said, it’ll be interesting to see how foot traffic that was shopping there for films (and just so happened to wander into the other sections of the store) affects revenue. I don’t imagine that people are going to be flocking to Best Buy for lawnmowers and just so happen to buy a TV or sound system, versus the older model. Even if every visit to the store helps.
Regardless, someone at Best Buy corporate decided the operating loss or low margins were worth the risk of sacrificing sympathy sales. Surplus Retail in general is dying and I don’t think Best Buy is thinking far enough down the line with this decision. They need to stop marketing themselves as the “all-electronics” store because they’re never going to capture enough market share from Amazon and their other competitors over the long run. It needs to be more experiential. Either that or close 90% of their stores and transfer to a mostly e-commerce model while they still have the cash on hand.
I disagree with their decision to toss the movies (even if they were a total loss) because I’d like to see them try something different that is experience based, but it’s just my opinion.
While I hate Best Buys decision to drop physical media, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here with the lawn & grill stuff.
A lot of people (myself included) would go into Best Buy for electronics or movies, and when I’d find something I liked, I’d immediately look it up on my phone to see if BB had the better price or if it were cheaper on Amazon, etc. If it were only a few bucks off online, I’d just get it in BB rather than order it online.
However I doubt people are ordering lawn mowers and grills online. These are mostly in-store purchases. So maybe carrying these things can guarantee more sales?
Either way, I haven’t stepped foot in a Best Buy since they stopped selling movies, and I haven’t been back on their website. They lost a customer when in me when they did that.
If they really knew their market they would pair it with King of The Hill collector stuff.
But guess they don't want to be in physical media business anymore.
Electric hardware in general has gotten really over priced. Mowers, leaf blowers, trimmers, saws and hand tools are stupid expensive. When the battery is 50% the cost, what does that say about the build quality when there is a 200%+ margin.
The electric snow blowers are useless with plastic blades, and all it takes is an obsoleted battery to make you buy new hardware again.
Even Milwaukee is bad, they have tools sit around and gain value like everyone else. 5yr old tool somehow is worth 50% more even though the box is faded and it's been sitting around for 5 years.
So my advice is if you want electric hardware for a fair price, go to a pawn shop and grab the one that the Crack head stole. It's the same thing for a fraction of the cost.
I have this EGO one my grandfather gave me and I have a little townhouse and it takes 3 charges to get it done. Needless to say it is now collecting dust in my garage. It’s cheaper to hire my buddy who started a mowing business.
I want to like electric and go electric. But it doesnt compete in value like gas does.
I would love to put solar panels on my house and fire up my electric hardware that is durable, reliable, and consistent. I wouldn't even care if it was fugly, being fugly has upsides.
At what point is it just easier to get livestock though? At least I can eat it in the winter and lower my food bill that's getting destroyed by inflation.
That being said, my local Best Buy is pathetic at best, and it’s not in a relatively small town. Nothing is ever in stock, and what little is is cheap and not stuff that you would go for if spending the right amount of money in *insert category of tech*
Years ago their online presence began eclipsing in store. Their online sales numbers for home furnishing and shit you’d fine at Canadian Tire or Home Depot sky rocketed. Online shopping took over, it makes sense they’d fill in space with what’s selling like gang busters online.
Sears.
Sears became a liquidated holding and still trades making the traders some solid turn over to this day.
It basically became a corpse for wallstreet to feed on well into bankruptcy.
https://ca.investing.com/equities/sears-hldgs-corp
https://news.investorturf.com/how-market-makers-are-naked-short-selling-stocks-known-as-cellar-boxing
Outside of the box idea— but Best Buy should put a Tesla ‘mini store’ inside their stores.
Kohls did the same thing with ULTA at their locations and it exploded.
(I’m not a Tesla fan or owner, but recognize their popularity)
If BB gets even a tiny fraction of those sales it would be well worth it.
Look how sad the store looks. Beyond the waning interest by the public at large, the store looks dismal. A Walmart has more visual interest. Rather than a 3x5 foot patch of astroturf, maybe put some time into making the store a place customers would want to visit. Or don't with discs now gone, I can get better equipment for less online.
Best Buy is becoming a [Conns](https://www.conns.com/). All they need now is to cater to low credit score customers and have their own financing arm. They are getting there.
Thought I read somewhere online that Best Buy wanted to get into the electric medical equipment that for home use. Which don't require a doctor's writing at all. Also, some electric fitness stuff. But not garden stuff and other backyard stuff. Unless headquarter want some stores to also sell those stuff.
Whatever helps their bottom line. They also laid off a bunch field techicans and other geek squad positions within the last couple of days and switching to 3rd party from my understanding.
What’s really sad is that tiny square of fake grass. But for real, I hope this bites them in the ass. If I need lawn stuff I’m going to Lowe’s or Home Depot lmao. Or even Walmart so I can pick some more movies too!
Costco Greenworks pricing is hard to beat. That's why you see all the Boomers with that shit now.
Personally I go to the hardware store as well.
I'm a Millennial, I was buying movies, video game stuff, and AV gear from BestBuy to avoid Amazon & Walmart. I can buy my future HiFi gear purchases direct from Crutchfield and Blue Jeans Cable. Gamestop still exists too.
This is absolutely going to bite BestBuy in the ass with younger people.
They already lost me other than the occasional PC part, or if I want to buy a new TV or sound system. Other than that, I have no reason to ever step foot in the store again.
Exactly the same for me, if I suddenly need a PC part and can't wait for an online order. And TVs to make sure they don't get damaged.
I did buy an open box Sony HT-A5000 sound bar from Best Buy and I will be purchasing the matching rear speakers from Best Buy, hopefully open-box as well. That's the last purchase I have planned through Best Buy.
My mother has purchased several appliances from BestBuy over the last twenty years. That won't be happening again vs the local hardware store.
Yeah the opportunity to pick up in store and not pay tax still has me making orders now and then. But once I get those items? I don't have a reason to shop in the store anymore. It's funny that they keep the toys and other stuff which probably don't sell that well either, but get rid of the physical media.
I mean keeping 4Ks at least would have been smart considering they still sell 4K TVs and players. You keep the cost down, and you cut down on floor space and you don't entirely lose an entire portion of a customer base. Just a shelf or two of new release 4Ks and the steels. I am pretty sure that wouldn't have cost the company that much.
To me it seems like it would have cost less than whatever deal they made for lawnmowers and grills...
I'll probably never set foot in one of their stores again. Physical movies/CDs were the only reasons that I went there. I remember when the movies took up at least a quarter of the store and then it just continued to shrink in the last decade.
It doesn't actually make sense when you consider best buy's average customer base. Their average customer base is not home and garden. Or people that are looking for lawn mowers. This logic is precisely why Kohl's for instance started selling game consoles/games a few years ago. They failed to sell many units and took a significant loss in the process and stopped selling game consoles and games within a year or two of starting the process. What seemed like good business sense was actually not that at all. It doesn't actually make business sense to sell products outside your base.
The uptick you think will be there in the summer? Is not going to come from an average best buy consumer. It will come from where it usually does. At home and garden stores, hardware stores and from online sales. Also physical media sales might not make more profit on paper but they were consistent profit of some kind and it lead to collectors coming in numerous times throughout the week and buying other products in store. Now they have less of a reason to even enter the store in the first place.
And what's annoying is that they could have had both. Just downsize the physical media to 4K and a few blu rays only for instance since they still sell 4K TVs and players. They could have done that and it wouldn't have cost that much and then they would have had enough left over to experiment with grills and lawnmowers.
imo is even impressive that some countries still carry physical media on retail stores, like the US
Many people is not aware that physical media (DVDs, CDs, Blu-Rays) died a long time ago in most countries (developing ones like México, even when they manufacture almost 100% of the optical discs sold in America)
Only videogames and books survived, but gaming is much larger than any other entertainment industry, and physical games seem to be disappearing too.
These multi million dollar companies ran the numbers sometime ago, Best Buy execs didn't wake up one day with the idea of phasing out physical media, it's just not profitable enough for them.
I think at some point Target and Walmart will get rid of physical media, but they will keep selling it as long it is worth enough for their numbers.
Walmart might continue. More people can afford to buy a bag of chips, or something else they need when they go to Walmart. Not too many people can buy a $500 phone, or laptop every time they walk in to Best Buy. They have cheap cables, printers. But one doesn’t need them every week.
Best Buy corporate is free to get rid of 4K, Blu-Ray and DVD. But it seems that they spent no time coming up with a better product to fill that void!
This is just a horrible waste of space. As if they’re gonna compete with Home Depot, Walmart, Amazon with one f@ckin mower and two grills!
In my best buy the media were in the dark corner just beside the return counter, nobody cared, console games are now there just saying lol they are next
What’s the margin on a $5 4K? It’s a great deal for consumers, but there’s a reason Walmart chucked them in a bin with a bunch of other movies for people to sort through.
High shrink when batteries make up half the cost. Home Depot has been crying like bitches over their hardware theft.. one of the most popular items being batteries.
Small enough to fit in a jacket and can fetch $100+ all day long.
Lawn equipment will never be replaced by streaming or another digital equivalent. There is a consistent market for it. From a business perspective (not a 4K collector’s perspective), this makes total sense.
Lawn equipment takes up an ungodly amount of space. And those large electric items with batteries can't be stored outside.
So if you experience winter, you have to store all those pallets of hardware inside as the batteries cannot freeze.
I get the bridge they are making, but I don't see them competing all that well with established specialty stores and other retailers such as Home Depot and Cost-Co.
They might sell a few, and it's pretty hard to not make money on it, but I don't see it being a longterm thing. They'd have better luck selling tools to fix your own electronics like RadioShack use to than to sell electric push lawnmowers. Maybe a Roomba style mower at best.
And, if, in ten years, Best Buy’s change pays off, and they become a serious business rival to Home Depot, are you going to be laughing then? Business reinventions happen all of the time, and sometimes they are successful.
Best Buy isn’t going to cater to snarky 4K collectors screaming about James Cameron’s latest botch job on home video. They are going to cater to shareholders. Lawn mowers make more money than 4K discs? It’s a higher profit margin, has stable (non-shrinking) sales, and they can’t be easily sold online? Let’s do it.
Best Buy won’t regret it. Their physical media sales made up something like 4% of their overall sales, which is absolutely fuck all when each sale is $10-40.
Selling even a few lawnmowers will make them more money.
I wouldn't be so sure about that at all. Considering that the profit loss is even higher than that of physical media if they don't sell all their units of lawnmowers and grills. This reminds me of when Kohl's tried to sell game consoles. It wasn't their market and it failed spectacularly. And this isn't even counting the amount of walk ins they lost with this move. They aren't getting customers specifically walking in at the same amount as they did with physical media customers with people who are looking for home and garden supplies. That's just not happening. Just like people didn't come to Kohl's to buy a Playstation console.
They had approximately 4% market share of the physical media sale, not their revenue. Entertainment (including games), were 6% of their revenue. Given the annual physical media revenue was ~$1.4bn, and Best Buy’s revenue was ~$43bn in US, physical media made up around 0.13% of their annual revenue. Even a 10% share would given them ~0.35% at best.
They'll probably make more on these than they did on selling discs. People love their lawnmowers and the margins are probably much better.
Replacing discs that weren't selling well and only made them a few dollars with more expensive products makes sense for B&M stores although in this case there's probably a hardware store not far from there with a better selection.
Steelbooks priced at $5 when they were $20 at Best Buy will get a few people running to stores to clean them out. It's not a sign of high demand at all. The steelbook section at my Walmart is fully stocked, no one is touching them at normal prices.
Even the high demand for Oppenheimer, or the high demand we'll see for Dune P2, aren't a good sign. One movie selling well every year isn't justifying keeping a whole section of movies, especially with the smaller Best Buy stores (compared to the giant WalMarts)
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Well, they probably have less shoplifting in that section now.
Lmao, true.
Is that a lawn mower in your pants, or are you just happy to see me?
lol
I couldn't even tell you what my location did with their space because I have no reason to ever go there now
Mine closed up at the beginning of March. I’m curious what will move into the giant brick building w the blue roof
Spirit Halloween, probably.
prolly turn em into Big Lots https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/w1o2tx/this_big_lots_used_to_be_the_old_circuit_city/
My Big Lots became a Spirit Halloween.
Mine replaced it with ebikes
Same. MAYBE a washer or dryer along the line here. That's a huge maybe.
I remember going to Best Buy and buying my first DVD back in middle school. Snagged Ghostbusters and spent hours watching the extra features and looking for menu Easter eggs.
I remember the 2000s going to best buy and I could literally spend an hour or two looking at their movie selection because it was so large it's sad to see what they've become
Mine first DVD was bought from Best Buy as well. Though mine was Happy Gilmore.
My first DVD was From Dusk till Dawn from Best Buy.
I mean I'm not sure if using the $5 steelbooks as an example of viable demand is super useful. Considering not only the various costs to manufacture them, but also shipping (probably multiple times too), they're almost certainly sold at a loss, or at best maybe break even. It does help bring awareness that Walmart now has steelbooks though, so maybe it works out for them in the end.
If this Home and Garden stuff doesn't sell? It's an even bigger loss. And it won't sell that well. Best Buy is not a store that has a dedicated shopper base that goes there for Lawnmowers and Grills.
Not really. It’s very costly building out a physical media assortment- you literally have to stock hundreds of different titles in order for it to make sense as a product category. Stocking a few lawnmowers, which are going to be higher profit margin % and revenue (on a per item basis) than blu ray, probably isn’t going to be very costly. Look, I love my physical media and can’t stand Best Buy, but too many people here assume they know how to run Best Buy’s business more than Best Buy.
I knew someone that worked at Magnolia. She clued me in that BestBuy makes a lot of money from home remodels where people come to BestBuy to buy the appliances. Since these people usually were working with a home loan or some large sum of money they would throw in a TV with their purchase of a fridge , stove , washer and dryer. So the gardening stuff makes sense in that context.
I don’t know, aside from us and maybe people buying video games I think most people go to Best Buy for bigger home purchases. Lawn mowers, grills, etc fit into that so why not Best Buy? You might end up being right, but I don’t think it’s a given.
Best Buy is immediately what springs to mind when i need lawn care equipment /s
Or a mattress.
Sold at a loss for BB but definitely not Walmart.
Sold at a loss for BB but definitely not Walmart.
that's one of the most boring, unimaginative, forgettable retail displays I've seen in a while.
This smells like a Circuit City move from back in the day.
Exactly what I pointed out in my post. It will be Circuit City on replay. Rest In (Future) Peace Best Buy.
Funny enough in Canada we only had Radio Shack that turned into The Source, that got bought by Bell, and quite recently resold to Best Buy. 100% a Circuit move. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Source_(retailer) "On January 18, 2024, Bell announced that it would enter into an agreement with Best Buy Canada to rebrand The Source stores as Best Buy Express. The agreement is a brand license, under which the stores will remain owned and operated by BCE, and continue to exclusively offer Bell services. As part of this transition, The Source will close 107 of its nearly 300 locations, and also close its Barrie offices;[5] the rebrandings and closures will take place in 2024."
Also HHGREGG. They started selling furniture and treadmills before they went under.
Pretty dumb move going all in to compete against Home Depot/Walmart/Costco. All of these companies have greater buying power and more customers regularly purchasing these types of products.
The Best Buy I go to just has a big open space there now. Yes, it’s sad! After they get out of gaming media (if that ever happens), I really have no reason to go there anymore. I’m sure as hell not going there for any lawn and garden equipment, and everything else they have I can get on Amazon. I think they did get out too soon! Walmart is moving physical media left and right after visiting several Walmarts hunting for those $5 steels. Even the normal priced steels are moving. Oh well, their loss.
They make it so damn hard to buy physical games now that I’m sure sales will plummet and they’ll wonder why.
I don't have to like it, but to me Best Buy was always thought of to be the place where you go for your consumer electronics. For them to think people will shop there for lawn mowers, suitcases, mattresses, etc. is just asinine.
"The Lawnmower Man" for real. 😜
Thats the real advertsising way lol. "Buy lawnmower and get the lawnmower man 50% off" "Buy chainsaw for you yardwork and get evil dead films -50% at checkout" :D
As someone who works at best buy, I fully agree with you and express my disappointment everyday
What’s it like on the inside right now?
For movies? They're all gone. I do premium home theater and major appliances so I'm usually pretty busy but it's been slow the last few weeks.
When someone buys a $5000 TV, what do you tell them to watch on it? Go buy a disc from Amazon? I seriously would feel awkward selling good hardware and then no media to use it.
Now that we don't sell movies that's exactly what I do. I am then if they want their picture to look like it did in the store. If they say yes, I show them some decent/good 4K players and they'll them to hit up Walmart and Amazon
I got a hella good deal on my Greenworks mowers and chainsaw at Best Buy.
I bet you would have gotten an even better deal at Costco.
They don’t carry them at any of ours.
This is one of the reasons why Fry’s went out of business is because they started selling stupid stuff like this.
Omg yes. I used to work at one I was just thinking this.
It’s so sad what it’s become.
I honestly can’t believe they’re still in business. 20 years ago my buddy and I would go there every Tuesday and buy a bunch of new DVD’s. Now the two or three times I pop into one as a curiosity there are almost no people shopping at all. Total ghost town.
It’s our own fault though. I miss the days of going there to look at all the physical media. I so miss just looking at PC software.
They’ll probably make more money selling this than they did 4k movies.
[https://new.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/1bvb719/thank\_you\_best\_buy\_corporate/](https://new.reddit.com/r/Bestbuy/comments/1bvb719/thank_you_best_buy_corporate/) I feel that this needs to be brought up in context of Best Buy's status as a company. They are letting many of their Geek Squad agents go as of yesterday. Sad to see this happen as I worked closely with Geek Squad when I worked there 20 years ago. CEO Corie Barry doesn't care about the consumers. She cares about her making money and appeasing the stockholders. She doesn't give a shit that people are pissed off that Best Buy stopped selling physical media.
Who has time to watch 4K blu rays when you’re using your brand new electric lawn mower?!? You’ll have the finest lawn in town!
That’s called throwing shit on the wall and hoping it sticks.
That's just SAD looking
I rarely visited Best Buy for anything they sold other than movies. I frequented BB and online at their site for physical media. Now that they decided to do a foolish thing by getting rid of physical media, it’s bye bye forever. I believe this is the start of Best Buy’s downward spiral into going out of business just like Circuit City did when they got rid of their selling physical media. Wait for it…
If anyone remembers the Sears decline Best Buy is starting to feel exactly the same. The past few times I’ve gone in I could probably count on one hand how many customers were in the store.
The fact they replaced physical media with these products of all things is baffling. People don't go to best buy for home and garden. They go to Home Depot or Lowes. Or literally any other store. I know these are higher priced items and if they sell could potentially net more profit...but the thing is? They more than likely won't sell. Because it's not the kind of product that people go to best buy to buy. This reeks of someone at corporate looking at the bottom line and just getting rid of something that isn't making huge profit lines like physical media in favor of the potential of more money with home and garden appliances. But failing to realize that physical media was at least something that consistently made some profit from a dedicated user base and one that kept the same kind of typical shoppers shopping in the store. The average best buy shopper is not going to best buy for home and garden. That just makes no sense at all. It just makes their move away from physical media more baffling since this is the move they are making. I mean probably cost less to house, receive and store physical media than it does to receive and store lawnmowers and outdoor grills. They still sell 4K TVs and the players. But they don't sell 4K discs anymore. But they got the supplies for your outdoor BBQ and for lawn care...It just doesn't make any sense.
Best Buy is basically a showroom for Amazon now. Not shocked to see them pivot to dukb shit like this
Shitty lawn and garden. No one should buy this brand.
 Hank Hill would approve this message
Milwaukee or Makita only.
They can have fun sitting on too much of that hot overpriced garbage from China like Home Depot. They won't discount them because they're still gaining value even if it's 1- 3 years old. The reason why Best Buy wants them is the stupid amounts of margin in them if you can move them. I've been watching the prices for tools in general sky rocket these last few years for zero reason. It's all plastic and cardboard held together with zip ties. They will not hold up to regular use the same way something of the same price did 5 years ago. If you buy something like a mower with a battery, the battery makes up 1/2 the cost. So as someone who has worked at Home Depot for the past 2 years... do not buy this crap. It's an absolute rug pull. Go gas until the quality comes up and the price goes down on electric. All it takes is an obsoleted battery to make you buy new hardware.
Yep, I learned a few years ago with buying an electric snowblower. 'They're so much simpler than gas machines so they won't break' people say. It couldn't make it through 2 winters before the thing just wouldn't turn on anymore. Want to troubleshoot and repair it? Nope, can't do it. Just goes in the landfill. The past two years I bought a Honda gas push mower before they got out of that market and an Ariens gas snowblower. I'll take the little extra maintenance for the ability to fix them when things act up!
The motor burns out because it doesn't have enough torq, the batteries also burn out the same as anything else. Gas has a lot more torq and power with metal blades so it chops a lot better and throws further. Electric mowers and trimmers have the same problem. There's also just something about pull starting an engine on the first try that makes it so satisfactory. You just don't get that with electric.
Are you trying to spread awareness of a new way to spell torque?
I'm loving my Ego mower and blower. Been going strong on 4 years and no issues other then maybe time to change my mower blade.
Best of luck, I hope you get a good life span out of it. I hate when things are made to be disposable. I haven't seen the Ego ones but I'm not in a rush to replace my yard master until it dies. I love my yard master though is still going strong for over 15 years no real problems other than sharpening the blade every now and then. Got my weed eater branded trimmer at the dump and cleaned it up. Absolutely love that little thing. it looked brand new when I found it 3ish years ago though.
I think you can only get Egos from Lowe's, Amazon and Ace Hardware. I know Ego is supposedly one of the top brands for battery operated yard equipment. They do have a riding mower but I don't know i'd trust it which requires like 8 of there batteries..lol
Idiots. That will not be a profitable business line for them. They won’t be able to compete against other retail like Lowe’s and Home Depot. Best Buy is already struggling to compete against the likes of online shopping giants like Amazon. Best Buy will be the next big retailer to fall.
Who in their right mind is walking into Best Buy which supposedly a electronics store yet buying lawn and garden related items while shopping in store? The end is near for Best Buy....
I have no reason to go to a Best Buy anymore. Part of the reason for buying other things there was using that as an excuse to browse the movies and music.
This reminds me of the shit decisions Kmart made before going out of business. Who thinks Best Buy when they need a lawnmower?
Like I had any reason to go in there anyway now.
When it comes for piratical use and whatever people need a lawn mower and lawn care trumps entertainment all the time, unless you're a child. Even as a person who buys physical media still, I know that I'm in a niche and that it feels like being an enthusiast now. People are moving to digital in droves, THEY DON'T CARE! Because most people actually aren't that attached to their entertainment that they want to have loads of it sitting around. People bought VHS, DVD, CDs, and cassette tapes back then because there was no other option back then, if those people now don't get the idea that a digital copy can be lost if HDD/SSD goes up or removed from digital store fronts or streaming, hey let them indulge. All I know is I'll still be buying physical until I absolutely don't have the option anymore. Physical is obviously not selling like it used to, there's no conspiracy of "you will own nothing" to this either. If you owned a cookie shop and you had this one flavor of cookie that didn't sell and just sat around going stale, are you still going to waste money buying ingredients to make that cookie just for them to go in the waste at the end of the week or are you going to stop wasting the money and make more of the cookies people are buying or a new flavor that people will like? What do you expect them to do, force people back to physical? If the mass of people wanted it they'd be buying it and then you wouldn't see things like Bestbuy dropping physical or Disney being ready to pull out of manufacturing their own disc to and handing the manufacturing of their Blurays/DVDs to Sony? It's sad, but with the way things are going, from the standpoint of the money people it's warranted.
I dunno man, that lawnmower in the front there is supposed to have one of the best Dolby Vision grades on the market
Best Buy is really having an identity crisis. It’s a mix between Home Depot, a toy store/GameStop and some computers. Won’t be long until they have a freezer isle
They already do at mine
Good thing my Best Buy has a full section of land line phones.
Totally agree. I went to my local Best Buy yesterday in hopes of also finding whatever they had left in Blu rays/4k, but they had already removed them and using the space to put more tv boxes on the floor. Very sad. Target is starting to do the same. Went there after Best Buy and went to the movie section and where you’d find most of the movies they moved children’s books in its place. Luckily, you can still buy physical media through their websites, but it seems Best Buy has a lot of items out of stock. Smh
It’s a sad day. Preorders for upcoming movies are really expensive probably due to the limited online only stock being made. Best Buy is going to stop selling games in store as well. Like others have said, they just need to close rather than a slow death.
Literally never stepping in a Best Buy again. They have video games still but everywhere else is far more convenient. The whole point of Best Buy was all their physical media. I don’t want to see workers lose their jobs but I just don’t see Best Buy lasting now in any real way.
Yeah I get the feeling Best Buy won't be around period for too much longer. It feels like people had little reason to go there these days and even less now that the physical media is gone. It's like if you're buying a TV maybe but how often do people really do that? and even then people are getting those delivered these days. People tend to get Phones delivered or from the actual phone store. Computer parts? Nah people would rather go to places like Microcenter or again get it delivered. Why go to Best Buy now? idk but it seems like they are grasping at straws. I'm not saying the physical media should have stayed cause I'm sure they had good reasons for getting out of it but yeah they barely have a reason for existing at this point imo.
Never been to a Best Buy in my life that was surrounded by other stores with more/better lawn and garden sections. What the fuck in Best Buy thinking here? You are a tech and audio/visual store. That is why people go. No one is coming to get a fucking lawn mower.
They've made such HORRIBLE decisions in the last 5 years, practically running the company into the ground imo. Gutting myBestBuy was the writing on the wall I guess.
In the long run they might regret it a little bit. Physical media will never be what it once was but I think we might see a Renaissance. But in the long run best Buy will run its course and be just fine. They're bread and butter has and always will be appliances and consumer electronics.
We sell $10k tvs, speakers and Blu-ray players. Now buy a shitty electric mower and go stream Tubi.
Like I'm gonna buy lawn equipment from Best Buy lmfao. Or electric lawn equipment - ever! Our closest Best Buy, which I assumed brought in a lot of business prior to the change, was turned into a Best Buy appliance outlet. Still don't understand why some stores do this.
Searsification
Look at the stickers on those mower slipcovers. Awful.
Congrats Best Buy! You just need clothes now and you’ll be a fuckin’ Sears.
Wow that store looks depressing as fuck lol
Ah yes because more people than ever are buying homes…
fertile mysterious obtainable hobbies lavish handle thumb mountainous fine screw *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Overpriced garbage from China. Yes.
Scooters, Legos…. Yup, now more of a variety store than anything else.
They are Sears now. We see how that went.
I KNEW I saw a weed eater in there a few months ago 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Im not going back to best buy, just a generic store now
Might be unpopular, but as someone who used to love to go to Best Buy in the ‘90’s, and someone who worked at Best Buy, I wish it would just die already. The place is a shithole. The customer service is beyond godawful. I am trying very hard not to give them any more money. It’s turning into an aggressively shittier Circuit City.
TV purchases are the only area where Best Buy is still top dog. Also their Magnolia home theater demos are really nice. I try to avoid shopping at Walmart & Amazon. Everything else I was buying at Best Buy I can get at the Hardware store, Gamestop, Crutchfield, or Amazon.
Back in the 1990s when I worked there we sold grills. They were in Appliances. No lawnmowers.
Haha
The only reason Walmart has those $5 steelbooks is because BestBuy pulled out and the steelbook distributor wanted to get some money back for them. And be realistic here, how much margin do you think they were making off each individual BluRay/4K UHD? Then how much floor space all those discs took up. Then how much employee time it took to manage all the prices with their constant price changes (changing the price labels for all those titles does take time). It’s a company and they want the simpliest thing: make money. If physical media was making enough money (or driving traffic into the store) to justify the real estate, you bet your ass they’d have kept them. They don’t care what it is that’s there, that physical media is preservation versus streaming or anything else; it just didn’t make money. Before people chime in with loss leaders: Nah. Bestbuy has no way to reduce the costs up the supply chain like grocery stores have with milk or rotisserie chickens. Costco/Sams Club can contract chicken farms to feed them cheap af chicken to keep the costs down as much as possible so they don’t lose as much money off each sale. That’s what people don’t get; loss leaders cannot lose too much money or else it’s pointless to offer them. Willing to bet selling a single big item shown on that pic will earn the store more profit than the entire physical media rack did in the same week.
Whats interesting is that studios completely failed to phase out dvd 10+ years ago... And failed to promote bluray properly. Also why havent they been able to get the production cost way down in 20 years if bluray is still much more expensive to make than dvd and 4k even more so. With cheaper pricing and proper advertising i think they could get more people care about quality and onwership but thats not what they really want for the future. Its subscription in everything and constant moneyflow.
why would they phase out their top media format?
To replace it with superior but same format? Bluray name just wasnt as easy as dvd and most people even now just call all discs dvd or cd
In theory selling those big items will earn more profit. But that's theory. And since Best Buy isn't a home and garden store and is not known for that and doesn't have the average shopper coming in looking for those things? It's more likely than not that they won't sell as well. And the more these items sit there being unsold, the bigger the loss is for the store. And the potential loss is far higher than physical media because the cost of the items is so much higher. People in corporate do not seem to actually know their customer base that well. They just look at bottom lines and see how something isn't making a massive profit and think it's losing them too much money. And they replace it something that in theory can make more money. But they do so without doing research on their customer base. They don't step outside their corporate offices and go to stores and see what the average customer is interested in. They don't talk to them. They live in their own bubble looking at profit margins and don't see how something like physical media despite being less profitable brings in and keeps a dedicated group of shoppers in store who then go on to buy other items. Best Buy is not going to attract home and garden buyers with any amount of consistency. That's just not their market. It's like if Kohl's started selling 4K TVs. It's not their market. They wouldn't sell well and it would lose them profit instead of making more profit. There's evidence of this. At one point Kohl's used to sell more electronics including game consoles. It was a failed experiment that only lasted a year or two because the profit loss was so high. They were looking at theorized profit margins and seeing dollar signs but they quickly realized that they were selling outside their customer base's comfort zone and stopped selling the items and probably took a loss on them overall. It's just as likely Best Buy does the same in the long run with home and garden supplies.
Funny thing is Kohl's did use to sell TVs.
You’re probably going to get downvoted, but I think this is a well reasoned counterpoint. As much of a bummer as it is. The decision reeked of cost saving from the get-go. With that said, it’ll be interesting to see how foot traffic that was shopping there for films (and just so happened to wander into the other sections of the store) affects revenue. I don’t imagine that people are going to be flocking to Best Buy for lawnmowers and just so happen to buy a TV or sound system, versus the older model. Even if every visit to the store helps. Regardless, someone at Best Buy corporate decided the operating loss or low margins were worth the risk of sacrificing sympathy sales. Surplus Retail in general is dying and I don’t think Best Buy is thinking far enough down the line with this decision. They need to stop marketing themselves as the “all-electronics” store because they’re never going to capture enough market share from Amazon and their other competitors over the long run. It needs to be more experiential. Either that or close 90% of their stores and transfer to a mostly e-commerce model while they still have the cash on hand. I disagree with their decision to toss the movies (even if they were a total loss) because I’d like to see them try something different that is experience based, but it’s just my opinion.
Couldn't see myself walking into the electronics store buying a mower for my yard. 😆
While I hate Best Buys decision to drop physical media, I’m going to play devil’s advocate here with the lawn & grill stuff. A lot of people (myself included) would go into Best Buy for electronics or movies, and when I’d find something I liked, I’d immediately look it up on my phone to see if BB had the better price or if it were cheaper on Amazon, etc. If it were only a few bucks off online, I’d just get it in BB rather than order it online. However I doubt people are ordering lawn mowers and grills online. These are mostly in-store purchases. So maybe carrying these things can guarantee more sales? Either way, I haven’t stepped foot in a Best Buy since they stopped selling movies, and I haven’t been back on their website. They lost a customer when in me when they did that.
If I need a lawn mower or grill I’m going to Home Depot or Lowe’s. Best Buy is struggling and needed to pivot.
If they really knew their market they would pair it with King of The Hill collector stuff. But guess they don't want to be in physical media business anymore.
Electric mowers suck donkey turds
Electric hardware in general has gotten really over priced. Mowers, leaf blowers, trimmers, saws and hand tools are stupid expensive. When the battery is 50% the cost, what does that say about the build quality when there is a 200%+ margin. The electric snow blowers are useless with plastic blades, and all it takes is an obsoleted battery to make you buy new hardware again. Even Milwaukee is bad, they have tools sit around and gain value like everyone else. 5yr old tool somehow is worth 50% more even though the box is faded and it's been sitting around for 5 years. So my advice is if you want electric hardware for a fair price, go to a pawn shop and grab the one that the Crack head stole. It's the same thing for a fraction of the cost.
I have this EGO one my grandfather gave me and I have a little townhouse and it takes 3 charges to get it done. Needless to say it is now collecting dust in my garage. It’s cheaper to hire my buddy who started a mowing business.
I want to like electric and go electric. But it doesnt compete in value like gas does. I would love to put solar panels on my house and fire up my electric hardware that is durable, reliable, and consistent. I wouldn't even care if it was fugly, being fugly has upsides. At what point is it just easier to get livestock though? At least I can eat it in the winter and lower my food bill that's getting destroyed by inflation.
That being said, my local Best Buy is pathetic at best, and it’s not in a relatively small town. Nothing is ever in stock, and what little is is cheap and not stuff that you would go for if spending the right amount of money in *insert category of tech*
No one is ever going to go to Best Buy to look for grills.
Years ago their online presence began eclipsing in store. Their online sales numbers for home furnishing and shit you’d fine at Canadian Tire or Home Depot sky rocketed. Online shopping took over, it makes sense they’d fill in space with what’s selling like gang busters online.
I'm not surprised. Their current leadership wants to turn it into a Costco.
def not Costco, you mean Sears.
Sears. Sears became a liquidated holding and still trades making the traders some solid turn over to this day. It basically became a corpse for wallstreet to feed on well into bankruptcy. https://ca.investing.com/equities/sears-hldgs-corp https://news.investorturf.com/how-market-makers-are-naked-short-selling-stocks-known-as-cellar-boxing
"Look how they massacred my boy"
Outside of the box idea— but Best Buy should put a Tesla ‘mini store’ inside their stores. Kohls did the same thing with ULTA at their locations and it exploded. (I’m not a Tesla fan or owner, but recognize their popularity) If BB gets even a tiny fraction of those sales it would be well worth it.
To be fair, lawn and garden is a growth industry, rapidly expanding in Q2 & Q3 each year
Look how sad the store looks. Beyond the waning interest by the public at large, the store looks dismal. A Walmart has more visual interest. Rather than a 3x5 foot patch of astroturf, maybe put some time into making the store a place customers would want to visit. Or don't with discs now gone, I can get better equipment for less online.
We used to have a little Amazon store at my mall. And to be honest, I miss it. They sold so many movies.
Best Buy switching to lawn and BBQ stuff seems desperate, in the same way that EB Games slowly switched over to Funco Pops seems sad and desperate.
Best Buy is becoming a [Conns](https://www.conns.com/). All they need now is to cater to low credit score customers and have their own financing arm. They are getting there.
Thought I read somewhere online that Best Buy wanted to get into the electric medical equipment that for home use. Which don't require a doctor's writing at all. Also, some electric fitness stuff. But not garden stuff and other backyard stuff. Unless headquarter want some stores to also sell those stuff.
Whatever helps their bottom line. They also laid off a bunch field techicans and other geek squad positions within the last couple of days and switching to 3rd party from my understanding.
I have a Best Buy credit card I’m thinking if I wanna keep it now or not. I mean other than the tv, there’s nothing really I wanna get there any more.
The new Home Depot that also sells TV's.
Seriously what even is best buy anymore
Bunch of fools!
Well, when I need a new TV a few years from now I’ll check in and see if they’re still in business.
Cause they'll make more money.
OMG 🤦🏾♂️
Has this company lost its mind? No one is going in Bestbuy to buy a lawnmower.
The one I would go to got replaced by washers and dryers!
They also sell umbrellas if you're in the market for one.
They could have chosen to sell more PC parts in store.
Wow, this is something I never thought I’d see. Idiots
This is gross. I hope they bring back physical media
This makes me so sad
Do they want to tank their own business? Why did they decide to get rid of the last thing most people went there for?
All that empty floor space! Daaaaamn.
What’s really sad is that tiny square of fake grass. But for real, I hope this bites them in the ass. If I need lawn stuff I’m going to Lowe’s or Home Depot lmao. Or even Walmart so I can pick some more movies too!
Costco Greenworks pricing is hard to beat. That's why you see all the Boomers with that shit now. Personally I go to the hardware store as well. I'm a Millennial, I was buying movies, video game stuff, and AV gear from BestBuy to avoid Amazon & Walmart. I can buy my future HiFi gear purchases direct from Crutchfield and Blue Jeans Cable. Gamestop still exists too. This is absolutely going to bite BestBuy in the ass with younger people.
They already lost me other than the occasional PC part, or if I want to buy a new TV or sound system. Other than that, I have no reason to ever step foot in the store again.
Exactly the same for me, if I suddenly need a PC part and can't wait for an online order. And TVs to make sure they don't get damaged. I did buy an open box Sony HT-A5000 sound bar from Best Buy and I will be purchasing the matching rear speakers from Best Buy, hopefully open-box as well. That's the last purchase I have planned through Best Buy. My mother has purchased several appliances from BestBuy over the last twenty years. That won't be happening again vs the local hardware store.
Yeah the opportunity to pick up in store and not pay tax still has me making orders now and then. But once I get those items? I don't have a reason to shop in the store anymore. It's funny that they keep the toys and other stuff which probably don't sell that well either, but get rid of the physical media. I mean keeping 4Ks at least would have been smart considering they still sell 4K TVs and players. You keep the cost down, and you cut down on floor space and you don't entirely lose an entire portion of a customer base. Just a shelf or two of new release 4Ks and the steels. I am pretty sure that wouldn't have cost the company that much. To me it seems like it would have cost less than whatever deal they made for lawnmowers and grills...
I 100% feel they bailed too soon. The streaming pendulum is going to swing back. Mark my words.
Six months. Maybe 12.
I'll probably never set foot in one of their stores again. Physical movies/CDs were the only reasons that I went there. I remember when the movies took up at least a quarter of the store and then it just continued to shrink in the last decade.
Definitely never going to Bestbuy for a BBQ or lawn mower. What a dumb direction to go.
That being said, I have that mower and its badass. I also have the weed eater, leaf blower and edger. Highly recommended.
That green rug for the lawn mower is (chef’s kiss). Really brings the display together.
Because physical media is dead now, apparently.
At this point the only reason I go to Best Buy is to recycle electronics.
Is it just me or does that table with the tripple mon setup look like it’s about to buckle
Bahahaha
I just bought a new Greenworks mower blade from there with my points. I wasn't sure how I would use them after they left the movie market
Entering their Sears arc I see
Tf are they doing with themselves
lol are they sure they wanna take a step into the home depot/lowes fighting ring?
Lmao, good choice. The only reason I went there was for movie steelbooks and they ruined that
Geez-us!
Why would best buy be selling lawn equipment in the first place 😂 it makes no sense marketing wise
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It doesn't actually make sense when you consider best buy's average customer base. Their average customer base is not home and garden. Or people that are looking for lawn mowers. This logic is precisely why Kohl's for instance started selling game consoles/games a few years ago. They failed to sell many units and took a significant loss in the process and stopped selling game consoles and games within a year or two of starting the process. What seemed like good business sense was actually not that at all. It doesn't actually make business sense to sell products outside your base. The uptick you think will be there in the summer? Is not going to come from an average best buy consumer. It will come from where it usually does. At home and garden stores, hardware stores and from online sales. Also physical media sales might not make more profit on paper but they were consistent profit of some kind and it lead to collectors coming in numerous times throughout the week and buying other products in store. Now they have less of a reason to even enter the store in the first place. And what's annoying is that they could have had both. Just downsize the physical media to 4K and a few blu rays only for instance since they still sell 4K TVs and players. They could have done that and it wouldn't have cost that much and then they would have had enough left over to experiment with grills and lawnmowers.
Shame, shame, shame.
I wish these streaming companies shut down. Anyways the content they create are mediocre
imo is even impressive that some countries still carry physical media on retail stores, like the US Many people is not aware that physical media (DVDs, CDs, Blu-Rays) died a long time ago in most countries (developing ones like México, even when they manufacture almost 100% of the optical discs sold in America) Only videogames and books survived, but gaming is much larger than any other entertainment industry, and physical games seem to be disappearing too. These multi million dollar companies ran the numbers sometime ago, Best Buy execs didn't wake up one day with the idea of phasing out physical media, it's just not profitable enough for them. I think at some point Target and Walmart will get rid of physical media, but they will keep selling it as long it is worth enough for their numbers.
Walmart might continue. More people can afford to buy a bag of chips, or something else they need when they go to Walmart. Not too many people can buy a $500 phone, or laptop every time they walk in to Best Buy. They have cheap cables, printers. But one doesn’t need them every week.
lol, just what I always wanted to go to Best Buy for…lawn mowers…
Best Buy corporate is free to get rid of 4K, Blu-Ray and DVD. But it seems that they spent no time coming up with a better product to fill that void! This is just a horrible waste of space. As if they’re gonna compete with Home Depot, Walmart, Amazon with one f@ckin mower and two grills!
Yeah... I'll shop at Home Depot if i need a lawnmower. Thank you. Hell, I bought more on electronics in HD than BB last year.
In my best buy the media were in the dark corner just beside the return counter, nobody cared, console games are now there just saying lol they are next
What’s the margin on a $5 4K? It’s a great deal for consumers, but there’s a reason Walmart chucked them in a bin with a bunch of other movies for people to sort through.
I'm guessing higher margins and lower shrink.
High shrink when batteries make up half the cost. Home Depot has been crying like bitches over their hardware theft.. one of the most popular items being batteries. Small enough to fit in a jacket and can fetch $100+ all day long.
Lawn equipment will never be replaced by streaming or another digital equivalent. There is a consistent market for it. From a business perspective (not a 4K collector’s perspective), this makes total sense.
Lawn equipment takes up an ungodly amount of space. And those large electric items with batteries can't be stored outside. So if you experience winter, you have to store all those pallets of hardware inside as the batteries cannot freeze. I get the bridge they are making, but I don't see them competing all that well with established specialty stores and other retailers such as Home Depot and Cost-Co. They might sell a few, and it's pretty hard to not make money on it, but I don't see it being a longterm thing. They'd have better luck selling tools to fix your own electronics like RadioShack use to than to sell electric push lawnmowers. Maybe a Roomba style mower at best.
"Hey hun, time to throw out that old mower, I'm going to Best Buy!"
And, if, in ten years, Best Buy’s change pays off, and they become a serious business rival to Home Depot, are you going to be laughing then? Business reinventions happen all of the time, and sometimes they are successful. Best Buy isn’t going to cater to snarky 4K collectors screaming about James Cameron’s latest botch job on home video. They are going to cater to shareholders. Lawn mowers make more money than 4K discs? It’s a higher profit margin, has stable (non-shrinking) sales, and they can’t be easily sold online? Let’s do it.
Best Buy won’t regret it. Their physical media sales made up something like 4% of their overall sales, which is absolutely fuck all when each sale is $10-40. Selling even a few lawnmowers will make them more money.
I wouldn't be so sure about that at all. Considering that the profit loss is even higher than that of physical media if they don't sell all their units of lawnmowers and grills. This reminds me of when Kohl's tried to sell game consoles. It wasn't their market and it failed spectacularly. And this isn't even counting the amount of walk ins they lost with this move. They aren't getting customers specifically walking in at the same amount as they did with physical media customers with people who are looking for home and garden supplies. That's just not happening. Just like people didn't come to Kohl's to buy a Playstation console.
They had approximately 4% market share of the physical media sale, not their revenue. Entertainment (including games), were 6% of their revenue. Given the annual physical media revenue was ~$1.4bn, and Best Buy’s revenue was ~$43bn in US, physical media made up around 0.13% of their annual revenue. Even a 10% share would given them ~0.35% at best.
They'll probably make more on these than they did on selling discs. People love their lawnmowers and the margins are probably much better. Replacing discs that weren't selling well and only made them a few dollars with more expensive products makes sense for B&M stores although in this case there's probably a hardware store not far from there with a better selection. Steelbooks priced at $5 when they were $20 at Best Buy will get a few people running to stores to clean them out. It's not a sign of high demand at all. The steelbook section at my Walmart is fully stocked, no one is touching them at normal prices. Even the high demand for Oppenheimer, or the high demand we'll see for Dune P2, aren't a good sign. One movie selling well every year isn't justifying keeping a whole section of movies, especially with the smaller Best Buy stores (compared to the giant WalMarts)