Dive Brief:
- Best Buy is growing its reach beyond indoor living. The electronics retailer is adding electric transportation, outdoor living, and health and wellness products to its in-store assortment, the retailer announced on Friday.
- Best Buy has added skin care technology from brands like Foreo, Vanity Planet and PMD Beauty to nearly 300 stores, including electric facial cleansers and products that use LED light therapy. It also introduced its newly-acquired outdoor furniture brand, Yardbird, to several of the company’s Pacific Sales Kitchen & Home stores and opened new Yardbird showrooms in key cities, including Denver, Chicago and Washington, D.C.
- After adding electric transportation to its e-commerce lineup last year, the retailer is planning to offer electric bikes, scooters and mopeds at almost all its stores during the next 18 months. It is also piloting a repair service for e-transportation products at select locations, per the press release.
Dive Insight:
Best Buy is moving beyond its core product offerings with this latest assortment expansion.
In addition to offering Yardbird furniture, the electronics retailer has partnered with Traeger, Weber and Ooni to showcase cooking and grilling products in stores. The rollout of those products follows the acquisition of Yardbird in November 2021 for an undisclosed sum. The deal signaled the retailer’s pivot away from inside living spaces.
Best Buy kicked off its electric transportation push last year as well. It started selling e-transportation products like bikes, mopeds and scooters online, featuring brands such as Super73, Unagi and Segway-Ninebot. Now that category will also be available in stores.
Adding more skin care technology to its assortment builds on a broader expansion into wellness and healthcare tech. In March 2021, the electronics retailer teamed up with Apple to release health and safety tools for elderly consumers via the Apple Watch. Best Buy acquired Current Health, a home care technology platform, last October for an undisclosed sum, which came about three years after its acquisition of connected health and emergency response provider GreatCall.
Like other retailers, Best Buy also faced supply chain issues that cut into its Q4 2021 earnings. Its Q4 comparable sales dipped by 2.3%, and its operating income dropped by 20% compared to last year. Best Buy CFO Matt Bilunas attributed the dip in sales to inventory issues and the spread of COVID-19’s omicron variant.
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