Winnipeg Retail

[CoryB]

Best Buy is still opening new stores where it makes sense and south Winnipeg could be one of those areas. The newer stores have an updated, smaller format. In general it is more geared towards a mobile store, media sales and online order pickup. The inventory of items larger than roughly a gaming system are very limited with those being available on an order to store basis.

In terms of why they kept the Future Shop brand at the time it was the better known of the two in Canada. Keeping the established brand also allowed them to do a slow rollout than say what Target did. It was also reported that they found customers comparison shopped to two stores so they tried to make it be two of their stores.

It is likely time to look at retiring the Future Shop brand, at least at bricks and mortar but leases on locations are something than can be challenging to just wind down.