Best Buy enters online world with redesign
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The new "runway experience" at Best Buy stores. The new interactive stations let customers download apps, explore interactive tv''s and the latest technology.
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Best Buy has never been shy about categorizing its employees. There are the "Blue Shirts," who sport cyan polos and help customers, and the "Geek Squad," clad in button-downs and ties, who help the customers' computers.
But a new redesign by the Richfield, Minn.-based retailer has turned all of its employees into "human search engines," equipped with mobile devices that can look up product data and compare prices.
It's part of what could be called a face-lift for the Facebook era. Other tech companies such as Apple and Microsoft have used retail stores as a physical place to experience the online world and Best Buy is following suit -- starting in Pittsburgh.
The company's stores in Pittsburgh and Las Vegas will unveil Saturday a redesign that turns its humongous spaces into mini learning stations that demonstrate how devices can interact with one another wirelessly. It's a foray into the immersive, in-depth retail experiences that have worked well for competitors, one where each site is part store, part Internet cafe, part high-tech watering hole.
To some degree, the tech retail craze already has hit Pittsburgh.
Apple recently opened a third area location at Ross Park Mall, and consumer electronics retailer hhgregg, a publicly traded competitor to Best Buy, announced in an earnings conference call this week plans to open 35 to 45 new stores in the Western Pennsylvania and Miami, Fla., regions.
Best Buy chose Pittsburgh for its inaugural remodeled stores four months ago because it's a big-but-not-too-big market with a strong tech community, said Scott Crawford, the district manager in charge of the region.
Pittsburgh's diaspora of residents helped, too. Best Buy executives noticed that every town in America seems to have some native Pittsburghers who may help spread the buzz by making a trip home and then returning to a different state.
"There's a Steelers bar in practically every state," Mr. Crawford said.
First Published November 11, 2010 12:00 am
