Carphone Warehouse reveals Best Buy Europe strategy
Carphone Warehouse is planning to open up to five “megastores” in the UK by next summer and about 200 such stores across Europe and Turkey in the next five years. The new venture comes after its strategic tie-up with Best Buy, which it signed earlier this year.
The superstores will be branded as Best Buy Europe and aim to position Carphone Warehouse as direct competition with home electronics and electrical retailers such as Currys, PC World and Comet.
The retailer is planning to invest £90m in the superstore format over the next 18 months and will invest £20m of that in the current financial year. In addition to Best Buy Europe, it will also launch several bigger shops called Wireless World. The first store will open at new London shopping centre Westfield later this month and it will sell smart phones, gaming devices, television and laptops.
Wireless World will help the retailer to expand into the television and music retail industry. It hopes to double its sales by March 2013 through this venture.
In May 2008, Carphone Warehouse sealed the £1bn deal with Best Buy, a US company, in a move to become one of Europe’s dominant retail player.
The news comes as the retailer announced that it had seen a 9% increase in total connections to 2.1m over the second quarter. It also added 41,000 net new broadband connections over the three months to September.
