2 Best Buy stores closing in metro Atlanta
Two Best Buy stores in metro Atlanta will close as the electronics retailer restructures in the face of falling sales and increased competition from online competitors.
Best Buy said Saturday a Fayetteville store at 128 Pavilion Parkway and a Loganville location at 4014 Atlanta Highway will be among 50 stores closing over the next year.
The two metro Atlanta stores were closed Saturday but will reopen Sunday for final sales, the company said. The stores will close permanently by May 12.
Best Buy would not disclose how many employees will be affected but it said the company is helping the workers find other positions within the chain. Those who do not remain with the retailer will be offered severance packages.
Best Buy, the nation’s largest consumer electronics retailer, has 30 locations in metro Atlanta – 22 big box stores and eight standalone Best Buy Mobile stores.
Best Buy is struggling as sales of TVs, digital cameras and video game consoles have weakened while sales of lower-margin smartphones, tablet computers and e-readers are on the rise. The retailer, which saw the demise of its former chief rival Circuit City, also suffers from the practice of shoppers’ visiting its stores to test products and then going online to find better deals on Amazon.com and other sites.
Best Buy lost $1.23 billion in its most recent fiscal year, compared with a profit of $1.28 billion in the prior fiscal year.
Earlier this week, Chief Executive Officer Brian Dunn resigned after the retailer launched an investigation into his “personal conduct.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report
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82 comments Add your comment
Jobie
April 14th, 2012
2:58 pm
I wonder when the AP and AJC will be having their next wave of lay-offs?
Pets.Com Sox
April 14th, 2012
3:04 pm
Soon to join Circuit City, The Wiz and others in the big box graveyard………
SAWB
April 14th, 2012
3:15 pm
Well, kind of funny in a way how theses big box stores put all the little shops out of business twenty years ago and now internet retailers are doing the same to them. I wonder how long the lack of customer service, expanding taxation and increased logistics cost cause folks to shift back to small local shops.
DawgVoiceofReason
April 14th, 2012
3:56 pm
End the tax advantage for online retailers NOW! Let them compete with brick and mortar stores on their own merits.
billh
April 14th, 2012
4:03 pm
One problem has been the fact that in my experience – and I do buy consumer electronic items regularly – is Best Buy hasn’t been exceptional as far as the knowledge of the sales staff, or in customer service. And the price – even against local retailers such as Fry’s – is seldom the lowest. So there’s been no reason to buy from Best Buy. And yes, I confess, I’ve done the thing mentioned in the story … gone to a store that’s close to where I am to actually put my hands on something, then gone elsewhere to buy.
g
April 14th, 2012
4:11 pm
as much as i dont want to pay more for stuff its time to tax all online retailers, we are losing tons of tax revenue from these stores closing
You Moron
April 14th, 2012
4:20 pm
So-called Voice of Reason: Instead of punishing those with successful business models by raising taxes, how about lowering taxes for the others to help make them more competitive?
John
April 14th, 2012
4:20 pm
When did Best Buy close on Moreland Ave.?
count_schemula
April 14th, 2012
4:25 pm
They should have gone to a hybrid model of Amazon meets brick and mortar.
Have a central warehouse locally and monitor just-in-time inventory to restock ASAP. Increase the offerings at the store, not do what they did and decrease offerings. Browsing in Best Buy is boring.
Also, they really only carry very basic items. Laptops all have low-res screens for instance. Home audio offering are slim and weak.
I still shop local for some things (MicroCenter, Fry’s), I appreciate having the item in hand and being able to return it, but what they did was try to optimize SKUs and it makes for a very very boring and limited shopping experience. If you don’t want a TV, an entry level DSLR, a $499 laptop with a meh processor and a 1366×768 screen, you HAVE to go to an online store to get the selection.
They went for the bean counter experience and not the shopping experience which was their only real advantage.
SouthsideD
April 14th, 2012
4:26 pm
i thought surely we would hear that the one in Morrow had closed. Everything else on Mt. Zion has closed. You gotta love good ole Clayton County.
Jiving Jaywalker
April 14th, 2012
4:28 pm
The incumbent President wants to do to America the same which Clayton County has done to itself since 1970.
You know what I’m saying?
Don
April 14th, 2012
4:31 pm
Best Buy on Moreland (Edgewood) is not closed.
Wolf Man & Donna
April 14th, 2012
4:33 pm
You most assuredly have not seen any thing yet dad-burnitt!!!
Ray
April 14th, 2012
4:34 pm
One of the biggest isseues they have had for years is that no matter how many people are in line, no more than two are three checkout stations are open.
Jim
April 14th, 2012
4:40 pm
Morrow survived because of lower intelligence of shoppers going there, Fayettville dies because shoppers there no that going on line is cheaper., Besides the Pavilion is being taken over by thugs.
Ray
April 14th, 2012
4:42 pm
The Clayton county store has not closed because for some reason, the more affluent Henry county has not developed a retail base. They do not even have a single shopping mall or big-box shopping center in a county with gated subdivisions with million dollar homes.
William
April 14th, 2012
4:42 pm
When Hi-Fi Buys went, I never liked the idea of a “Best Buy” trying to replace them. I could get high quality, top of the line, not big box versions of tech in Hi Fi Buys. It was never cheap, but was a better experience than whats out there now.
Long live the Hi-Fi Buys and Circuit City’s………………
Carlos
April 14th, 2012
4:42 pm
It’s darned near impossible for a store serving a limited locality, with rent to pay and a sales force (even a lame sales force), to compete with an online retailer. It has a negative impact on the local economy due to the loss of jobs and taxes and tends to concentrate profits into the hands of fewer and fewer people. On the plus side, I save a few bucks on a tv.
Philiopo
April 14th, 2012
4:46 pm
The BestBuy at Edge wood isn’t dead, its just sleeping.
SouthsideD
April 14th, 2012
4:53 pm
Ray, you obviously have not ventured past your beloved Clayton county line. On Jonesboro Road in McDonough (Henry County), there is Super Target, Belk, Staples, Books a Million, Dicks, Best Buy, Sams Club. Now at exit 218 in McDonough (Henry County) there is Kohl’s, J.C. Penney, Toys R us, Academy Sports, TJ Maxx. You should probably get out more.
UGA75
April 14th, 2012
5:04 pm
The other horse in this race is the HH Gregg Stores. They have great sales people who know what they are selling, they take care of customers with problems and do stock and sell the top of the line equipment not just low end. Best buys sold models available from Target and Walmart, but at higher prices. Strange business model!
adam
April 14th, 2012
5:05 pm
a best buy salesman once told me not to buy their products. Ha!!!
Betty
April 14th, 2012
5:08 pm
Didn’t they just open the one in Loganville that they’re now closing within the last couple of years?
Old timer
April 14th, 2012
5:09 pm
I hate HHGregg……
Horsetoothedjackass
April 14th, 2012
5:30 pm
Seeing the Loganville store closing is a surprise since that location only opened a couple of years ago (If I’m not mistaken, it replaced the one they had in Stone Mountain right off of US-78.). The Fayetteville store is somewhat surprising, but then again, a lot of what they sell can be bought at the Walmart, Target and Home Depot in the same shopping center.
When they initially announced that they would be closing some stores, I really did think that the one in Morrow was a likely candidate for closure. Interestingly enough, their Morrow location is where Media Play used to be located. That same shopping center also used to have a Circuit City and CompUSA had a location across the street. The shopping center here HH Gregg is located at is a fairly dead shopping center as most of the big box spaces in that shopping center are empty.
truthbtold
April 14th, 2012
5:36 pm
All of those people that want to save money by purchasing online will lose more money from the value of their homes depreciating from being surrounded by empty store fronts and vacant shopping plazas. A lot of people are too stupid to realize that if you don’t support businesses in your neighborhood, then you won’t have businesses in your neighborhood! These businesses supply jobs, and a bunch of empty business locations with even more people out of work hanging around in the neighborhood, equals vandalism, thefts, and muggings. What a savings indeed…….
PM
April 14th, 2012
5:40 pm
You could start a meme about the Morrow store. Morrow Best Buy is SO bad ….. you are much better off spending an hour to drive to the Mall of GA Best Buy. THAT is how bad Morrow Best Buy is.
Surprising about Fayetteville. It wasn’t a big store. But they do have Walmart, Target, and HHGreg in the same center. OTOH, Morrow has a Brandsmart and Costco down the road.
CN
April 14th, 2012
5:49 pm
I went into the Loganville location last summer and told them that I would buy a refrigerator and dishwasher right now if they took $50 off. The manager told me no and I walked out. I went to another store and bought it. I feel bad for the employees, but not the company.
ATLBRAVE
April 14th, 2012
6:00 pm
The #1 main problem going on here is PRICE and LIMITED SELECTION. Best Buy decided to offer a limited amount of products and HIGHER prices once they were the only show in town. The ONLY reason people go online is for a BIGGER selection of products and you guessed it….LOWER PRICES! Its that simple. I’m not a stockholder or a CEO of anything but for some reason this is rocket science to Best Buy and Circuit City and Hi-Fi Buys. Best Buy at the very least back in the 90’s actually made you feel like you got a deal on something walking out the door. Nobody feels like that anymore! And that is the problem!
Bob
April 14th, 2012
6:03 pm
Yahoooo!! Die Pavillion Die!!!
Kneel Borezt
April 14th, 2012
6:36 pm
BrandSmart is better. In the past 3 years, I have purchased 2 60″ HD sets from them — in preference to Best Buy. Good to see that their dumb staffing practices have finally come back to haunt them.
dealme
April 14th, 2012
6:36 pm
will best buy mark down everything in the store? I need a new TV.
selltime
April 14th, 2012
6:39 pm
hi fi buys, best buy—all the same–they try to oversell you stuff you don’t need—expensive “monster” cables for $30-$50 that you can buy online (same quality) for $5-6. They just don’t learn.
EM
April 14th, 2012
6:48 pm
@Bob-Really? Do you really want it to die? Let’s see, if every one of the retailers there shut down tomorrow, what do you think would happen? It would revert back to the pine forest it once was overnight? No! You’d be left with big empty gray boxes doing nothing. Ask Union City how that’s working out for them.
What will happen is at the liquidation, as has happened at every liquidation, is the prices get jacked up and discounts are taken from there. To those that don’t do their homework they think they are getting a deal.
IF Fry’s just happens to occupy the former BB location in F’ville I’d be OK with that. It’s been a long time coming.
Furious Styles
April 14th, 2012
6:55 pm
Gripe all you want truthbtold, doesn’t make sense to buy and hdmi cable at Best Buy for $25.99 when you can get a 10ft hdmi cable at newegg for $7 and free shipping. Price gouging and only 2 cashiers when 20 people are in line will sink you every time. Don’t get me started on the worthless warranty up-selling.
Vashtai
April 14th, 2012
6:55 pm
I was at the Edgewood Center Best Buy yesterday, and it was crowded with a line at the checkout.
Furious Styles
April 14th, 2012
7:00 pm
Who’s idea was it to set checkout up like a cattle corral? You get rid of lanes and put that horrible checkout corral in and then it takes 15 minutes to check out. Then who is that guy or lady in the front of the store standing at the podium?? Are they gonna give a speech or something? They’re standing around like furniture. Get away from the podium and get on a darn cash register.
Circuit City not gone....look em up....
April 14th, 2012
7:03 pm
Is not closed…entirely, neither is CompUSA. Should a law in the bankruptcy court that you cannot use name for X number of years. Go out of business but turn around very quickly (CompUSA) and use name again.
Tell AJC to drop the irritating Meebo bar at the bottom.
jj
April 14th, 2012
7:14 pm
I remember buying a video game from Best Buy a few years ago. When I arrived home and opened the case, the game had been replaced with a blank cd. I tried to return it but BB accused me of trying to rip them off. I never went back. I’ve never had that happen with Amazon.com and they have always exchanged an item or refunded my money, NO questions asked. Good riddance Best Buy.
david c
April 14th, 2012
7:19 pm
After BestBuy absorbed MediaPlay and closed them down, I’ve been waiting for this to happen. I hate to see people lose jobs, but the employees at BestBuy are uninformed and rude about it. Good riddance!
Michael
April 14th, 2012
7:38 pm
Where are guys supposed to shop? No Circuit City, no Comp USA, No Media Play, No HiFi Buys, Now maybe Best Buy? I guess we have Frys.
rakpat
April 14th, 2012
7:47 pm
Michael — There’s brandsmart and Fry’s (like you said)…..only those will survive as electronic superstores……other than that…..bb will eventually disappear, and you also have the Internet.
Why pay $80 for a hdmi cable at BB when you can get it at Amazon for $10. People are becoming smarter.
Realist
April 14th, 2012
7:57 pm
Goodbye Best Buy!
Virginia Gun & Guy Sharp
April 14th, 2012
8:09 pm
@Realist: You are right, THEY ALL WILL GO UNDER.
Hosea Williams Driving School
April 14th, 2012
8:18 pm
I have a great new business idea to put in the empty Borders & Best Buys.
Diddy
April 14th, 2012
8:25 pm
It’ not just Best Buy. Soon you will see just about every big box start closing stores, with the exception of Home Depot or Lowes.
I don’t think internet sales are the major problem. I don’t think I have ever seen a UPS driver deliver a 60″ plasma. The problem is that there is no new exciting tech product out there besides smart phones and tables. Plasma TV’s are so cheap now everyone has one or two in their homes. 3D TV is about to die. Current Playstation and Xbox is old and everyone has one. Music and movies are all digital now. What is driving one to go to Best Buy to buy something?
Frizzlefry
April 14th, 2012
8:27 pm
@Furious Styles
The folks that stand at the podium and look like furniture are usually Loss Prevention. They usually check your receipt if you’re leaving with a big box item or laptop, making sure you aren’t trying to steal it. Can you imagine how many people would try to walk out with stuff if they weren’t there? I really don’t blame them for that. Although, like most every one else said, you don’t have to know any thing to be employed there. It’s frustrating sometimes. You just gotta look out for yourself and do the research on your own. You can’t count on them knowing ANY THING at all about the product. Again, like someone else said, I feel bad for the employees that are gonna lose their jobs but I don’t feel bad one bit for BB it self.
RaceToTheBottom
April 14th, 2012
8:36 pm
Put this on the BestBuy tombstone when they go under: “They wouldn’t sell Visio. They should have sold Visio.”
RaceToTheBottom
April 14th, 2012
8:37 pm
Make that Vizio.
gagirl
April 14th, 2012
8:57 pm
@Jim—Did you REALLY just talk about the lower intelligence of certain shoppers when you misspelled the word “know”?!?!?!??! Are you serious right now??? L-M-A-O And I love how you said the the Fayette Pavilion is being taken over by “thugs”. We all know what you meant with that one. But seeing that you’re obviously ignorant, I won’t even bother.