Best Buy: Американский ритейлер электроники и бытовой техники

American multinational consumer electronics retailer

Best Buy Co., Inc. is an American multinational consumer electronics retailer headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Originally founded by Richard M. Schulze and James Wheeler in 1966 as an audio specialty store called Sound of Music, it was rebranded under its current name with an emphasis on consumer electronics in 1983. Best Buy operates internationally in Canada, and formerly operated in China until February 2011 (when the faction was merged with Five Star) and in Mexico until December 2020 (due to the effects of the COVID 19 pandemic). The company also operated in Europe until 2012. Its subsidiaries include Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, and Pacific Sales. Best Buy also operates the Best Buy Mobile and Insignia brands in North America, plus Five Star in China. in the United States. In Canada, carriers include Bell Mobility, Rogers Wireless, Telus Mobility, their fighter brands, and competing smaller carriers, such as SaskTel. Hubert Joly is executive chairman of Best Buy, having been succeeded as CEO by Corie Barry in June 2019. According to Yahoo! Finance, Best Buy is the largest specialty retailer in the United States consumer electronics retail industry. The company ranked number 72 in the 2018 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

On August 22, 1966, Richard M. Schulze and a business partner opened Sound of Music, an electronics store specializing in high fidelity stereos in St. Paul, Minnesota. Schulze financed the opening of his first store with his personal savings and a second mortgage he took out on his family's home. In 1967, Sound of Music acquired Kencraft Hi Fi Company and Bergo Company. In 1981, the Roseville location, at the time the largest and most profitable Sound of Music store, was hit by a tornado. In response, Schulze decided to have a "Tornado Sale" of damaged and excess stock in the damaged store's parking lot. In 1988, Best Buy was in a price and location war with Detroit based appliance chain Highland Superstores, and Schulze attempted to sell the company to Circuit City for US$30 million. Circuit City rejected the offer, claiming they could open a store in Minneapolis and "blow them away." In 1988, the company introduced a new store concept dubbed "Concept II". Concept II replaced dimly lit industrial style stores with brighter and more fashionably fixtured stores. Concept III stores were larger than previous stores and included expanded product offerings, "Answer Center" touchscreen kiosks that displayed product information for both customers and employees, and demonstration areas for products such as surround sound stereo systems and video games. Best Buy launched its "Concept IV" stores with its expansion into New England in 1998. Concept IV stores included an open layout with products organized by category, cash registers located throughout the store, and slightly smaller stores than Concept III stores. The stores also had large areas for demonstrating home theater systems and computer software. In 1999, Best Buy was added to Standard & Poor's S&P 500. The company acquired Magnolia Hi Fi, Inc., an audio video retailer located in California, Washington, and Oregon, in December 2000. Later that year, Best Buy acquired the British Columbia, Canada based electronics chain Future Shop Ltd., marking its entrance to the international marketplace. Under the deal, Future Shop was purchased for about US$377 million and continued to operate as subsidiary independent from Best Buy Canada. Brad Anderson succeeded Richard Schulze as Best Buy CEO in July 2002. Anderson had begun working at Best Buy in 1973 while attending seminary school. In October, Best Buy acquired Minneapolis based Geek Squad, then a 24 hour residential computer repair business with offices in Minneapolis, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In June, Best Buy divested itself of Musicland in a deal with Sun Capital Partners under which Sun Capital received all of Musicland's stock and debt. Best Buy launched its "Reward Zone" loyalty program in July following an 8 month test of the program in San Diego, California. Also in 2003, Best Buy's corporate offices were consolidated into a single campus in Richfield, Minnesota. In January 2004, Best Buy hired Virtucom Group to revamp Best Buy's website and handle all of the company's online content. In May, the company launched its "customer centricity" program, which segmented its stores according to customer profiles. The program also called for employees to focus on specific customer groups rather than product categories. In October, Best Buy completed rolling out Geek Squad "precincts" in every American Best Buy store. In April 2005, Best Buy began eliminating mail in rebates in response to negative customer reaction against them, and instead started giving out instant rebates via notebook computers. In May 2006, Best Buy acquired a majority interest in Chinese appliance retailer Jiangsu Five Star Appliance for $180 million. At the time of the deal, Jiangsu was the fourth largest appliance chain in China with 193 stores across eight Chinese provinces. In June, the company opened Geek Squad precincts at Office Depot in Orlando, Florida. In January 2007, the first Best Buy branded store in China officially opened in Shanghai. In March 2007, Best Buy acquired Speakeasy, a Seattle based broadband VOIP, data, and IT services provider. The acquisition was worth $80 million, and under terms of the deal, Speakeasy began operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy. The company's products also became part of Best Buy's For Business program. Best Buy also expanded its Geek Squad market tests in March, opening Geek Squad precincts in FedEx Kinkos stores located in Indianapolis and Charlotte, North Carolina. In October 2007, Best Buy became the first consumer electronics retailer to exit the analog television market, carrying only digital products that became mandatory in June 2009 by the FCC. In February 2008, Best Buy opened its first store in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Best Buy's Geek Squad market tests in Office Depot and FedEx Kinkos stores ended by March. Also in March, the company began promoting the Blu ray optical disc format over the HD DVD format, a move which ultimately contributed to Toshiba's decision to drop HD DVD. In May, the company agreed to buy 50% of the retail division of The Carphone Warehouse, a London, England based mobile phone retailer. The deal was worth $2.1 billion. Best Buy became the first third party retail seller of Apple's iPhone in September. Later that month, the company agreed to acquire Napster for $121 million. In December, Best Buy opened its first store in Mexico. In February 2009, Best Buy leveraged its partnership with The Carphone Warehouse to launch Best Buy Mobile, a Best Buy branded mobile retailer. Best Buy Mobile standalone stores were opened in shopping malls and urban downtowns. These Best Buy Mobile outlets were also added in all Best Buy branded stores. In June 2009, Brian J. Dunn became Best Buy CEO. Dunn replaced Brad Anderson, who was retiring. Dunn had joined Best Buy in 1985 as a sales associate. In 2000, Dunn became senior vice president of East Coast operations and president of North American retail operations in 2004. His most recent position was as president of Best Buy since 2006. In November 2009, Best Buy partnered with Roxio's CinemaNow to launch an on demand streaming service which allowed streaming from any Internet device sold by Best Buy. In December 2009, Best Buy opened its first Turkish store in İzmir.

Best Buy sells consumer electronics and a variety of related merchandise, including software, video games, music, mobile phones, digital cameras, car stereos, and video cameras, in addition to home appliances (washing machines, dryers, and refrigerators), in a noncommissioned sales environment. The building exteriors of Best Buy branded stores are typically light brown, with the entrance designed to look like a blue box emerging from the structure. Corporate employees operated under a results only work environment from 2005 until March 2013, when the management style was abandoned by Best Buy CEO Hubert Joly. As of October 29, 2016, Best Buy operated 1,026 Best Buy, 331 Best Buy Mobile stand alone stores, and 28 stand alone Pacific Sales stores in the US. The company ultimately settled for $200,000, but admitted no wrongdoing. In 2014, Best Buy settled for $4.55 million in a class action lawsuit filed against them in April 2010 by consumers who claimed Best Buy was making unsolicited phone calls in contravention of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act.

In the second quarter of 2007, Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal ordered an investigation into the company's use of an in store website alleged to have misled customers on item sales prices. In December 2007, the Los Angeles Times reported on the same issue, in which some customers claimed they thought they were surfing the Internet version of bestbuy. com at an in store kiosk only to learn that the site reflected in store prices only. In response, company spokesperson Sue Busch indicated the in store kiosks were not intended for price match purposes and rather were a means to navigate in store availability. Since the initial investigation, a banner was placed on the in store site to make its customers more aware of the difference.

On April 26, 2008, the U. S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) fined the company $280,000 for not alerting customers that the analog televisions it sold would not receive over the air stations after the digital transition on June 12, 2009. The company challenged this ruling in May 2008 by the FCC saying it was and is in compliance with current FCC regulations pertaining to the digital transition.

Best Buy was one of several companies named in a 2007 report by Greenpeace for purchasing raw materials or manufactured products derived thereof from logging companies that in the opinion of Greenpeace, contribute to unethical deforestation of taiga in Canada. Since that time, however, the company launched what it calls Greener Together to increase the energy efficiency of its products, and reduce consumer waste through more recyclable packaging and proper disposal of certain electronic components such as rechargeable batteries and empty ink cartridges. As a way to improve its image and past environmental issues, the company introduced a recycling program in 2009 that has since collected nearly half a billion pounds of consumer electronics and e waste, and is available at all their stores for a nominal fee. These items are then handed over to certified recyclers in the U. S. for proper recycling. The company's goal is to collect one billion pounds of recycling. It also has been named to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency top 50 list of the largest green power purchasers. In 2011, the company purchased nearly 119 million kilowatt hours of green power electricity generated from renewable resources, such as wind, solar, geothermal, biogas, biomass, and low impact hydropower.

In their attempt to combat child pornography, the FBI hired several Best Buy employees from the Geek Squad division to covertly work for them flagging potential targets. In one incident, a customer brought in his computer for troubleshooting, which a Best Buy employee flagged as containing images of child pornography and reported to the FBI. The customer was indicted for possession of child pornography, although the judge in the case later threw out nearly all the evidence against the defendant due to "false and misleading statements" made by an FBI agent while trying to secure a search warrant for the customer's house, and the government ultimately dropped the case.

On October 20, 2023, CBC News released the results of a Marketplace investigation which found that that Best Buy technicians had viewed private files, such as intimate photos, on customer devices. One technician was also caught copying photos onto a USB flash drive.

In March 2024, following threats of shareholder related action from conservative advocacy groups, Best Buy agreed to block donations by employee resource groups to eight LGBT organizations, over their support for access to gender affirming care for trans minors. This was met with criticism by a number of groups, including GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign.