Best Buy closing stores

LESS IS MORE: Best Buy, facing intense competition from online rivals Apple and Amazon, and looking to avoid the fate of rival Circuit City, which closed its doors in 2009, said it will close 50 of its 1,100 stores. “We’re clearly going to have more doors and less square footage,” said CEO Brian Dunn, laying out plans to slash $800 million in costs and use the savings for training sales associates. In the quarter ended March 3, Best Buy swung to a loss of $1.7 billion from a year-earlier profit of $651 million. Revenue rose 3% to $16.63 billion, but sales at stores open at least 14 months fell 2.4%. A key problem, analysts told the N.Y. Post, is that shoppers increasingly are using Best Buy’s cavernous stores as showrooms, checking out big-screen TVs, digital cameras and laptop computers before heading home to order them on Amazon. In response, Best Buy is testing smaller formats in Minneapolis and San Antonio and is rapidly expanding its chain of Best Buy Mobile cellphone stores. (3/30a)