7 Best Buy and 8 Future Shop Stores to Close, Part of “Renew Blue” Strategy

Numerous reports this morning noted various Best Buy locations across Canada such as ones in Montreal and Victoria were mysteriously closed with security guards handing out pamphlets informing customers and staff of the closure.

A Best Buy Canada spokesperson sent us the following statement on the status of their locations. The closures are the company’s transformational “real estate optimization plan”, part of what the company calls their “Renew Blue Focus” aimed to enhance the customer experience through a “modernized multi-channel approach.”

Best Buy Canada today launched the first phase of a long-term transformational strategy to optimize the company’s retail footprint across the country. As part of this transformational plan, Best Buy will permanently close 8 Future Shop and 7 Best Buy Big Box stores today in select markets nationwide.

Over the next 36 months, Best Buy will move into the second phase of the “Renew Blue” strategy and plans to open state-of-the-art new Future Shop Small-Concept web stores and new Best Buy Mobile locations across Canada, where and when appropriate. This move will enable the company to better serve its customers in both more locations and smaller markets across the country. The move was based on an extensive review of Best Buy’s retail footprint in Canada in an effort to reduce unnecessary costs, eliminate redundant operating systems and to optimize its real estate strategy to reflect a more a changing retail landscape.

Employees affected by these closures will receive severance and given hiring preference at other existing locations. There are currently more than 120 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile locations combined with over 140 Future Shop stores across Canada.

As an official Apple reseller, Future Shop and Best Buy locations have long been a source of Apple products for customers.

Looks like Best Buy and Future Shop will start making smaller stores, such as this recent concept store in North Vancouver that opened last November, which at 5000 square feet, is one-fifth the size of a regular store.

Update: List of store closures below via the Vancouver Sun:

In British Columbia, five Best Buy stores were closed along with one Future Shop – the West Kelowna store. Best Buy stores shut down in BC include Queensborough; all three Best Buy stores on Vancouver Island – Nanaimo, Victoria, Langford (Westshore Town Centre), and the Best Buy store in South Surrey.

Other Future Shop closures across Canada include stores in Montreal and Laval, Quebec, Regent, Manitoba, Macleod, Calgary and in Ontario, Ancaster, Barrie South and Erin Mills. In Quebec Best Buy stores in Lachenaie and Sherbrooke were closed.