Is there a Best Buy in the UK or London?

Living in times where most technological things are bought and shopped for online, Best Buy is a lifesaver for customers who still prefer the traditional method of visiting the stores and inspecting products.

What is Best Buy?

Best Buy is a well-known American electronics retail company that offers and sells a wide range of electronic products, from cell phones to computers, home appliances to car electronics, cameras, TVs, Home theaters, movies, games, music, and many more tech items at great deals.

While originally founded in 1966 by Richard M. Schulze and his partner James Wheeler as just an audio specialty store in St. Paul, Minnesota, with the name ‘Sound of Music’; it later got its name changed into the ‘Best Buy’, as we know it today, in 1983.

That same year Best Buy opened its first superstore in Burnsville, Minnesota, with consumer electronics being the main focus, and following its increasing success the company eventually went on to be labeled as USA’s second-largest consumer electronics retailer, a decade later.

Even today, with powerful competitors like Amazon or Walmart with their ever-rising popularity, Best Buy continues to uphold its name as one of the most popular leading electronics retailers. Having even survived the ‘retail apocalypse’ period in the 2000s, Best Buy now has more than 1000 stores located in the United States and Canada.

With such a huge name in the States, one might eventually wonder whether Best Buy stores can also be found in a city like London or the UK. So, if you are traveling to the UK and need a new electronic device from BestBuy or perhaps are just curious about the presence of this American retailer in the UK or London, this article is for you.

Does Best Buy Operate in UK or London?

The answer would, unfortunately, be ‘no.’ There is currently no physical Best Buy store in the UK or London, nor is there any product shipping available to these places. The available location options to shop from Best Buy online are only limited to the US and Canada, as well.

Interestingly, however, the absence of Best Buy in the UK has not always been the case. Best Buy once did have its stores in the UK but had failed to make an impact like in the US.

So, What Happened?

After reaching huge heights in the American market, Best Buy entered Europe with great hopes of success by opening its first store in Thurrock, Essex, in 2010. It invested an amount of $2.2 billion in purchasing a 50% stake in Carphone Warehouse, a local UK-based mobile- phone retail company, in 2008, intending to expand its big box influence in the country.

Nevertheless, after unexpectedly failing to bag good financial results, the company closed 11 of its stores along with its transactional website in January 2012. Stopping its risky joint undertaking, it withdrew from the European market with a loss of up to £140m.

Reasons for failure

The reasons for Best Buy’s failure in the UK were multiple, and the most prominent among them were:

1. Miscalculating Competition

It might not be wrong to say that Best Buy was overly ambitious when it planned to establish itself in the UK. It aimed big but failed to commit.

One of the first mistakes Best Buy made was that it had revealed all its business plans two years before entering the market. This ensured ample time for its competitors to prepare themselves with effective strategies for any possible challenges.

Setting their goals a little too high, Best Buy also had wished to generate revenues from £6bn–£7bn and open 200 stores in the UK by the end of the year 2013, although a few bad decisions led to limiting the number of stores to only 11, which were all also eventually closed off after 18 months.

2. Poor Advertising and lack of recognition

Culture plays a huge factor in advertising and promoting a brand in a particular region. Best Buy had displayed the same TV ads they used in America to reach the UK audience and this caused UK consumers to be unable to relate to the content put forth.

Another reason was that many people in Europe had no idea what Best Buy was, and so they failed to gain considerable recognition in the country with the already prevalent existence of local companies like Curry’s and Dixon.

3. Falling Victim to Recession

Talk about bad economic timing, Best Buy entered the European Market just after the Great Recession in the UK from 2008-09. The company couldn’t expand its business in a country suffering from financial crises.

4. Changing Interest of Consumers

Consumers in the UK were no longer interested in the outdated trend of buying Big TVs and electronics in stores and had started leaning towards online research and shopping.

5. Unwanted Big-Box Model

The big-box model refers to the setting up of physically large stores. Unlike in America, Europeans did not prefer big stores to shop in. Additionally, Best Buy’s few available stores were located on the outskirts of towns, failing to gain people’s preference over easily accessible local retailers. Their poor advertising had also further led to these big stores running dry of their shine.

Best Buy had failed to properly study the European market and understand its customers’ needs. And so, while still having a huge presence in America and Canada, one cannot find its stores today in the UK or other European countries.

Popular Alternatives of Best Buy in the UK or London

Although there is no Best Buy in the UK or London, people can easily find other popular stores to shop for electronics. The country has a few good equivalents to Best Buy, and some of them include:

• Currys PC World
• Argos
• John Lewis
• Costco
• Newegg

With these well-known retailers and the availability of other online shopping sites like Amazon or SCAN, shoppers in the UK have plenty of options to purchase the best electronics they desire. So even if there is no Best Buy in the UK or London, one can still easily get their hands on the latest technology they need.

Also read: Is Europe a Market Leader of the Gaming Industry – A Detailed Discussion