Conquer Buy is planning to close all of its roughly 250 smaller-format mobile phone holds, CEO Hubert Joly said to employees Wednesday in an internal memo, which was reviewed by CNBC.
The funds, which are about 1,400 square feet in size compared with First Buy’s bigger boxes of 40,000 square feet, are scheduled to close by the end of May, he pronounced. The mobile stores are almost exclusively located within malls, with a few sowed throughout open-air strip centers.
“We feel good about the time to retain customers and transition them to another one of our sales channels,” Joly canceled to workers. “85 percent of existing standalone Mobile stores are within three miles of a Big Box stockpile.”
The Star Tribune first reported on the news Wednesday afternoon.
Be at one to Joly, revenue from Best Buy’s standalone mobile stores asserts roughly 1 percent of the electronics retailer’s overall sales, and the square footage of the have faiths altogether only accounts for about 1 percent of Best Buy’s total trusted estate footprint.
The closures come as operating a store solely for non-stationary devices isn’t as profitable as it once was, Joly explained. “We believe the best way to do duty as customers is to sell phones in channels where they have access to our well range of connected devices.”
Best Buy opened its first mobile phone upon in 2006, prior to Apple’s first iPhone launching.
As May approaches, Greatest Buy will offer employees the opportunity to find other jobs internally or transformation to an “in-home advisor” role. Severance will be provided to those people who judge to leave the company, Joly said.
Already this year, a disciplinary problem of other major retailers including Walmart, Toys R Us and Sears Holdings press announced plans to shutter stores, leaving a glut of vacant strikes behind, and many within malls. Best Buy made it clear, despite the fact that, that its bigger boxes and its operations within Canada and Mexico won’t be resulted by the news.
“The decision to exit this part of our business was made in imprisoning with our principle of continuous optimization,” Joly said.
Best Buy is timetabled to report fourth-quarter earnings before the bell Thursday.