Business News Retail

Best Buy looking for UK stores

By | Published on Tuesday 21 April 2009

The US’s largest consumer electronics retailer Best Buy has been looking at possible sites for new stores in South England and Wales, according to Reuters. The US retailer has been expected to launch in the UK ever since it bought half of Carphone Warehouse’s retail business last May, though the impact of the credit crunch back home has seemingly slowed a UK launch down.

According to the newswire the Best Buy/Carphone Warehouse joint venture is considering possible retail units in Southampton, Bristol, Cardiff, Swansea, Ipswich, Crawley and at the Lakeside shopping centre.

It’s thought the new stores would carry the Best Buy name and, while they may have Carphone Warehouse mobile phone departments in them, would sell all kinds of consumer electronics. It’s not clear if the new stores would, like their US counterparts, sell CDs and DVDs. Best Buy also own Napster, though it’s not clear either whether they would try to flog the subscription based digital music services in-store.

Although Best Buy tend to prefer out of town stores, there were rumours they were looking for a central London shop, with some speculating they may take one of the former Virgin Megastore/Zavvi units, maybe the iconic Piccadilly Circus unit occupied by Tower Records back in the day.



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