Future Shop is the best name ever given to an electronics retailer, and also a chain in Canada that for the last 14 years has been owned by Best Buy. Best Buy also operates stores in Canada, which means that Future Shop has really been competing with itself. Until now. All of Future Shop’s current stores closed abruptly this weekend, and half will soon re-open as Best Buy stores.
Future Shop had 131 stores, and plans to keep 65 of them as Best Buy locations. The rest of them will close entirely, putting 500 full-time and 1,000 part-time employees out of work.
It may have been a terrible idea all along for Best Buy to keep all of Future Shop’s stores open in competition with its own stores, especially when both stores are similar big-box electronics formats. Some of their stores are even neighbo(u)rs in the same shopping plazas, as you can see in the photo illustrating this post.
Instead of withdrawing from the country entirely, as Target is currently doing, Best Buy plans to invest about $200 million (Canadian dollars) in the reorganization to stay competitive in Canada, which will include adding large appliance sales to its stores and improving its e-commerce operations.
Future Shop shutters Canadian stores, will rebrand as Best Buy [Globe and Mail]
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist