Best Buy’s Secrets for Thriving in the Amazon Age<br />Here are the keys to Best Buy’s turnaround, according to Mr. Joly:<br />When Mr. Joly took over in 2012, Best Buy was bleeding out.<br />Mr. Joly realized that with some minor changes, each of Best Buy’s 1,000-plus big-box stores<br />could ship packages to customers, serving as a mini warehouse for its surrounding area.<br />Mr. Joly also realized that if Best Buy was going to compete with Amazon, which has spent billions building a speedy delivery system<br />and plans to use drones to become even more efficient, it needed to get better at things that robots can’t do well — namely, customer service.<br />In his first months on the job, Mr. Joly visited Best Buy stores near the company’s Minnesota<br />headquarters to ask rank-and-file employees about the struggles they encountered.<br />When Mr. Joly arrived at Best Buy, the company’s online ordering system was completely divorced from its stores.<br />Under Mr. Joly, Best Buy has used the scalpel as quietly as possible, gradually letting<br />leases expire for unprofitable stores and consolidating its overseas divisions.<br />To combat showrooming and persuade customers to complete their purchases at Best Buy, Mr. Joly announced a price-matching guarantee.<br />“If people stop buying PCs or they don’t care about big-screen TVs anymore, they have a challenge.”<br />Mr. Joly knows that despite Best Buy’s recent momentum, it’s not out of the woods yet.
