Best Buy Tests Smaller, Digital-Friendly Store Format

Best Buy will be debuting new stores that will feature a smaller overall size as the company focuses more on eCommerce, Bloomberg reported.

The new format will focus on getting digital orders out and will be around half the size of the usual stores, according to the report.

Best Buy’s idea is akin to the way many retailers are retooling their operations to accommodate the shift away from in-person stores. The company is planning to shift stores in one or two markets to the new setup, cutting overall square footage for shoppers to around 15,000 square feet instead of the usual 27,000, Bloomberg reported.

The additional space will go toward giving more room to package and prepare digital orders for either pickup or delivery, the report stated.

Online sales increased by nearly three times for Best Buy in the last quarter, but the company has had to cut jobs, Bloomberg reported. The remaining employees in Best Buy’s approximately 1,000 U.S. stores are being trained to work in other parts of the stores. That, according to Best Buy, will “drive efficiencies in labor planning and cost.”

Unlike the retailer’s heyday when almost all of any given store was taken up by TVs and other consoles, the slimmed-down Best Buy locations will come with fewer items, and some locations will use the extra space for more Geek Squad tech support desks, according to Bloomberg.

PYMNTS reported that Best Buy is catering to its base by focusing more on digital sales, with more curbside pickup hours and the store boasting that orders could be ready within the hour, along with more same-day delivery and next-day delivery options.

The company also announced in December that it would be transforming 340 of its stores into ship-from-store hubs. Seventy percent of the ship-from-store units are expected to come from those locations.