Consumer electronics retail giant Best Buy is looking to aggressively expand its mobile store presence.
With the established goal to boost its online presence, reduce the scale of larger stores, and launch more “mobile” retail locations, Best Buy is gunning to regain some of its lost market share from major – and ubiquitous – competitors like Amazon and Wal-Mart.
At present, Best Buy has just north of 1,000 big-box stores across the US. In five years, the company – according to Reuters – would like to have between 600 to 800 Best Buy Mobile stand-alone stores in the United States.
The company expects that cutting U.S. “big box” square footage by 10 percent over the next 3 to 5 years will generate annual savings of $70 million to $80 million.
“I do believe that a lot of their bigger box stores have to be downsized. If there was a disappointment, I was kind of hoping they would be even a little bit more aggressive than what they outlined,” says RBC Capital Markets analyst Scot Ciccarelli.
This week, Best Buy Chief Executive Brian Dunn told investors that his company is aiming to double its current $2 billion online business within 3 to 5 years.
“The online channel is our greatest growth opportunity,” Dunn said.
Another reason for potentially significant optimism is that online taxation reforms may soon eliminate the remarkable edge that online retailers – like Amazon – continue to exert over Best Buy. If online transactions will be mandated to include sales tax, Best Buy will be able to better compete with its primary rivals in the consumer electronics space.
“We believe it’s just a matter of time before this field is leveled,” Dunn suggested.