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  1. #1
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    Future Shop Canada


    Another Canadian iconic store disappears from the landscape.......

    For anyone not familiar with Future Shop, they were the Canadian equivalent of Best Buy US. so much so, that Best Buy purchased them in 2001 in an amicable transaction rather than pursue their own expansion into Canada from scratch.

    Since Future Shop had a very strong customer base, the decision was made to keep the stores and brand intact.
    Future Shop was very popular with the Steelbook movie community, one of the pioneers in this marketing strategy, offering Canadian collectors unique and exclusive items not available anywhere else in North America, and at times worldwide.
    Many of those now long Out of Print (OOP) steelbooks, are highly sought after by collectors.

    Source National Post


    Best Buy announced Saturday it is shutting down dozens of Future Shop stores across Canada, effective immediately, resulting in about 1,500 job losses.

    Of 131 Future Shop locations across the country, 66 will be shuttered for good and the remaining 65 will be turned into Best Buy outlets. That will leave Best Buy with a total of 192 locations across Canada, including 136 big box stores and 56 Best Buy Mobile stores.

    Best Buy bought the iconic Canadian electronics retailer for $580 million in 2001, but has operated both brands concurrently.

    The company noted in its announcement Saturday that many Future Shop and Best Buy stores are located “adjacent to each other, often in the same parking lot.”

    The FutureShop.ca website will also be consolidated into Best Buy’s.

    About 500 full-time and 1,000 part-time positions will be eliminated as a result of this move, but Future Shop says affected employees will receive severance and other support.

    Best Buy has also promised to invest about $200 million in its stores and web properties, and to hire more staff. It did not say whether Future Shop employees would be given special consideration for those positions; a spokesperson told the National Post that “in some cases employees will be offered the opportunity to reapply.”
    On a closing note, like many retailers, they maintained a community forum, and had very strict rules which were rather generic, and open for interpretation by the moderators.
    One of those rules pertained to the reference by name, or even suggestion of any other retailer than Future Shop in the forum being strictly forbidden.

    I can fully comprehend the reasoning behind this, but to carry it so far as to moderate posts because of the inclusion of "Best Buy" in name or reference, and replacing it with "competitor"was really over the top.

    It's really difficult to explain that you purchased a Best Buy Exclusive item through the Future Shop website, and having the said references replaced with "Competitor", including the link to the item, since it stated "Best Buy Exclusive" in the address line.
    So to all those moderators from the now defunct Future Shop forum, I have only one thing to say:
    Good luck moderating "Best Buy" now, you have your work cut out.



    I can't see through walls, but I can kick your ass.

  2. #2
    j7wild Guest
    Best Buy sucks.

    I sued them in 2000s for breach of contract, deceptive trade and practices, violating consumers credit laws pertaining to their no payment no interest for 1 year credit card deal and among other things and won.

  3. #3
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    @j7wild

    Don't know anything about BB in the US apart from them not doing too well in the Brick and Mortar business, but just like Target in Canada, which recently declared bankruptcy after 2 or so years of doing business here, BB in Canada is a separate corporation, and the consumer protection laws are completely different here anyway.

    BB here is fine, they have their issues like any other retailer, problem is that they were basically competing with themselves having 2 banners. I personally think they should have done the opposite and convert all the BB stores to Future Shop, but similar to Target, BB overestimated the weight of their Brand name outside of the US.

    Future Shop has been around since the early 80's as opposed to BB which entered Canada about 20 years later, so my guess is that they feel safe having been around for more than a decade. Time will tell, but the predominant brand name here was still Future Shop no matter which way you slice it.


  4. #4
    j7wild Guest
    BB here went through a total facelift after a couple of CEO changes and bankruptcy in the past 5 years.

    I went to BB a year ago and it's not the same anymore.

    It's actually more annoying than before.

    Before you could go in and browse and pretty much you are left in peace once you tell the first BB employee that you are just browsing.

    Now they have personal shoppers who earn commission, well they had commissioned sales people before but the rules on how they earn their money are now more stringent making them more aggressive;

    you can't even walk through the door without being pounced by a pack of hungry hyenas/coyotes/wolves/foxes!

    They also made the DVD movies and music CD section smaller so pretty much if you do any browsing, it's all the expensive stuff from laptops to tablets to Apple products to computers to home theater packages.

    I would be very happy if BB goes out of business.

    Wal Mart and Target and Conn's electronics department are bare boned and mostly low end cheap stuff some of it over priced.

    Circuit City and Compusa are gone.

    If BB goes out of business here, the only competition I will have is Fry's and Micro Center and Apple Stores (we started carrying Apple products as an authorized dealer a year ago).

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    : /

    We already had our Futureshop right near me close out a couple years ago.
    It was a nice place for blu-rays, what I found there wasn't at "HMV" or "Best Buy".
    Now I just go to "HMV" because it's (now) closer.
    I find the BB here is rather crummy in selections and only good for their discounted discs.

    FS always had more variety in every thing. They really knew how to take up space in the store.
    BB is mostly spacious and vacant with latest commercial brand name products.

    BB isn't even that easy to ask the staff for anything or to try order anything if it's out of stock.
    I guess the staff is only trained on a per-scenario-basis as everyone only goes there for: Games, PC parts (why?), and some phone doo-dads.

    They do get the usual boxsets and collector's items for movies, though.
    They're good on that and when sales come rollin' in, those boxsets are nice to grab.
    Got myself first 3 seasons of The Walking Dead on bluray as a 3-pack (season 4 just launched on bluray that week). The cost of all 4 season on bluray that day turned out to be just under half the price if I bought them all individually.
    Also got a free T-shirt, to boot.

    Our Target we just obtained is closing out up here, too.
    Hopefully the Target gets turned into a Walmart. We can use one closer to us.

    The Sony store in our mall here closed out. Not that I ever wanted to shop in that over-priced, commercial monster.
    We still have a Mac and Windows store though...

    As long as we don't lose NCIX or Electronics/Botique here, I think we can manage.

  6. #6
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    There were only a handful of Sony stores anyway, to which I never really understood the concept, apart from a couple of items which were specific to their website or the Sony store, everything else was cheaper at the other retailers.

    HMV was great in the late 90's and early 00's, they focused on CD's and had some great deals on select movie promotions with a competitive online store to boot.
    They nearly went under after holding off implementing streaming media in music, at which point they scaled down CD's, upped the DVD/BD's, added a gaming and swag area, re-implemented a "make believe" online store, but they're still struggling, and apart from their promotions, they are way above on the price break.

    I say "make believe", since the last time (Summer 2014) that I tried getting an HMV exclusive item, they explained that the online store was actually orders going to the Yonge street store in Toronto, and they simply packed it up and shipped it Fedex or UPS at some ridiculous cost. They revamped the site since then, so this might have changed.

    As for NCIX and EBGames, they are mainly online retailers, even though you will find small footprint locations of EBGames in most Shopping Centers, but that's strictly gaming anyway.

    HMV in Canada, like all other Canadian retailers, is independently run, thus not affected by the HMV bankruptcy protection of HMV in the UK, just in case someone was wondering.

    No matter, the pickings are slim, and I still say that BB would have a better chance of surviving in Canada if they would have done the opposite, transitioning into Future Shop instead of the other way around.


  7. #7
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    I forgot about HMV's swag area. That perplexed me when I first saw it.
    But, it actually makes sense now, these days.

    CD's going for $10 is still too much for something that I used to have.

    They do have a nice, small selection of graphic novels. Mainly the mainstream ones that inspired motion pictures.
    I nearly bought a fancy boxset of a Batman GN because it had a plastic bust with it.

    I'd rather get comics at the nearest comic shop here, that seems to struggle a bit.
    Or the main downtown district of Vancouver. I'd have a higher chance of getting hard cover there.

  8. #8
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    I can only speak about the Futureshop in my neck of the woods in Canada. I use to buy all my movies there, but have recently had a difficult time finding many movies there that I was interested in. It use to be that there were 8 or 9 rows of movies on display. They slowly cut that back to about 2 or 3 rows. And a lot of the time there were empty spaces in those rows. Futureshop has felt empty for a good while now. And it just wasn't the movie department. Most departments looked smaller than they use to be. Instead of aisles of merchandise they set up tables. These tables took up more space and only had items for display. They must have kept merchandise in the back room and went and got them for customers.

    Personally I think the Futureshop brand has been in the decline in recent years and months. My brother went into Futureshop not long ago and there was another customer standing in the same aisle as him. The stranger says to my brother, "Remember when you use to be able to walk into a store and find what you were looking for?"

    I do most of my movie shopping on amazon now. I didn't like walking out of these brick and mortar stores empty handed.
    Homer Simpson: "I'm normally not a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me Superman."

  9. #9
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    @goodasgold

    You have to remember that stores are not just built and filled up with stuff indiscriminately placed everywhere, all stores are carefully designed in such ways to maximize sales. the entrance for example is rarely centered, but strategically placed on one side (can't recall which), this is due to a study which showed that people have a tendency to favour going in one direction more than the other when entering a store, so by placing the higher margin and popular items on that side, you increase your chances of getting sales. same applies to TV's, they are normally at the farthest point in the store, because they want you to go through the store first.

    In respect to the movies, Best Buy (US) experimented with different concepts in order to "up" the decreasing sales, and in Canada, they chose to experiment mostly in the Future Shop Locations. Everything was in Alphanumeric order originally, then they switched to genre, then by studio grouping, and yet again by price range, the end result of all these changes put them in worse shape than anything else, so much so that customers simply gave up and shopped elsewhere.

    Best Buy then contracted an outside firm which specialized in merchandising, their claim to fame was that they had tools (software) which could actually customize down to the individual store level, what product(s) that were best suited for each location using historical sales from previous years.

    In respect to movies, this turned out to be a massive fiasco, simply put, they would receive a shipment of new releases, accompanied by a document called a "Planogram" or something to that respect.

    This document would not only list the aisle and shelf for each title, but narrow it down to the exact position on the shelf, and sometimes place the same item in 4 to 5 different locations within the same shelf.
    The kicker was that any title not listed on the Planogram for this specific location, was basically returned to the warehouse for redistribution.

    Hence, most customers as you stated, simply walked out without the title they were looking for, and sourced it elsewhere. They actually had gone back to alphanumeric in the fall of 2014 at some point, a large portion of movie sales are impulse purchases anyway, you go for one specific title and come out with 6 others.

    Took them a while to figure this out I guess, can't plan impulse buying after all......


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