So on the 5th March this year I blogged on the likely fate of Best Buy in the UK commenting on the madness of their entry to the very developed and competitive market. Just what were they thinking??? In parallel with Tescos doomed entry to Japan (& US - watch this space) we have a large successful arrogant retailer that is entering a market without properly doing their homework. There was no space in the UK for Best Buy stores and the competition of Dixons et al. are pretty competent in seeing off the challenge.
So the inevitable has happened & Best Buy will close all of it's UK stores. The reasons they cite - "growth of product categories such as mobile phones and tablets" ok so why does this mean your stores fail??? "development of on-line retail" was that not predictable when you entered in 2008?? Finally "economic conditions" - here you might have a point, but given that they only entered in 2008 when the global crisis was in full swing this is not news and could have been realised a lot earlier.
This year the venture has lost £46.7m, last year £28.8m and in the previous years of capital investment surely similar figures and you build a picture of a lot of wasted money due to not doing your homework. I'd like to think that any of my international retailing students could have spotted the errors here & saved a couple of hundred million quid of ultimately pension fund money...
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