“Best Buy planned dramatic action Thursday after it posted a $1.7 billion loss for the last quarter of its fiscal year,” Electronista reports. “While better than expected, it led the company to a plan to save $800 million by its fiscal 2015 that would see it close 50 of its ‘big-box’ stores during its fiscal 2013, which started with the beginning of March. The retail chain hadn’t named the stores in question, but expected these and other cost savings to cut $250 million in 2013 and $300 million just for retail by the 2015 target.”
MacDailyNews Note: The company said it plans to open the same number of stores in China during the same time period.
Electronista reports, “Some of the other savings would come from cutting 400 corporate-level jobs, infrastructure savings, keeping non-product purchasing to a minimum, bringing former consulting work in-house. It hoped to reduce the costs coming from switching to new products and reduce the costs of both supply and handling returns. The results would be partly helped by closing UK big-box stores after a brief attempt at exporting the primarily North American shop format abroad. Best Buy would still run in Europe, but in 2,400 small locations.”
Read more in the full article here.
Read more in Best Buy’s press release here.
MacDailyNews Take: Looks like forcing customers to buy service plans in order to get iPads out of storage and making customers stand around over half an hour just to be allowed the chance to buy an iPod nano, then having the so-called “manager” tell the customer “we’re busy,” and then having the customer walk out and buy their nano at Target isn’t working out so well for Best Buy.