Over two dozen Best Buys to close nationally, Mishawaka location not one of them
MISHAWAKA, Ind. -- Electronics giant Best Buy announced earlier this year that they will close 24 stores over the course of the 2024 fiscal year, followed by an additional 10-15 the following year.
On Wednesday, ABC57 learned that the Mishawaka Best Buy, across the street from the University Park Mall, will not be closing in the near future.
While the company did not go into details on which of the more than 1,000 U.S. locations will close but did confirm that South Bend is not currently planned to be one of them.
The news came out of a recent quarterly earnings call.
"As our ongoing practice, we will continue to close existing traditional stores during our rigorous review of stores as their leases come up for renewal," said Best Buy CFO Matt Bilunas, according to the transcript of a Feb. 29 quarterly earnings call. "In fiscal '24, we closed 24 stores. And in fiscal '25, we expect to close 10 to 15 stores. In fiscal '24, our profit share was approximately 1.4 percent of domestic revenue, consistent with fiscal '23. The expected pressure in fiscal '25 is primarily due to expected increases in net credit losses."
While digital sales and in-store pickup trends remained consistent, the company is shifting its focus to getting more 'My Best Buy' paid subscribers.
"Our Q4 digital sales mix was flat to last year at 38 percent of total domestic sales. Customer in-store pickup of online orders was also consistent at 44 percent. We improved our delivery speeds, expanding the percent of ship-to-home online orders delivered in two days," said CEO Corrie Barry.
We have been very focused on getting our app in the hands of customers, and I'm pleased to say that on Black Friday, it ranked No. 3 across shopping apps and No. 4 across all apps on Apple's app store. We ended the quarter and year with seven million members across our two-tiered My Best Buy paid memberships. Paid members consistently showed higher levels of interaction with comparatively higher levels of spend at Best Buy and a shift of spend away from competitors."