The ghost of Future Shop Past


Image result for future shop logo
Future Shop Logo

Today for Lost Retail History. I'll be talking about a old chain of electronics stores called Future Shop. Best Buy owned future shop from 2001 till its 2015 demise after Best buy decided to permanently close 65 stores and keep 60 or so stores open as Best Buys due to overlapping stores.

Beginnings

Future shop was founded in 1982 by Hassan Khosrowshahi in Vancouver. The store sold computers, software, games, videocassettes, audio equipment, music, and other electronics. Future shop reached $2.8 million In sales by December 1983.  

The 90s

By 1990, Future Shop became the largest retailer of computers and consumer electronics in Canada and was operating 38 stores across the country and parts of the United States.  
In 1998, Future Shop purchased the Canadian division of Computer City from CompUSA. 
 By the end of 1998, the U.S. locations of Future Shop were performing badly, with $53 million in losses over the last few years, and Future Shop projected another $30 million in losses would occur by the end of the next year. Due to this, in March 1999, the company announced that it would close U.S. operations.
In February 2001, Future Shop announced that the company would close and liquidate the five remaining Computer City stores because of poor sales. At the same time, Future Shop also attempted to acquire Chapters, a chain of book stores in Canada, but failed to come up with a reasonable offer. 
future shop store
Typical Future shop store. Image:Wikipedia

Best Buy years 

In March 2001, Best Buy acquired Future Shop for $580 million. Best Buy continued to operate Future Shop as a separate division following the purchase, acknowledging the strength of the brand. However, in 2002, the company began to open Best Buy locations in Canada as a secondary chain. Some Best Buy locations were very close or sometimes in the same plaza as a Future Shop. Some of the new Best Buy locations would reduce sales at Future Shop stores located nearby, but typically the new Best Buy would make enough money that would more than make up for the drop in the sales. 

Decline

future shop store closed
A Future Shop store closed in 2015. Image: Wikimedia Commons
The success of Future Shop started to an end on January 31, 2013, when Best Buy announced that it would begin to close various locations, including eight Future Shop locations effective immediately, as part of a "long-term transnational strategy to optimize the company's retail footprint across the country." In 2014 and early 2015, more Future Shop locations were closed, including those in Boucherville, Greenfield Park, Montreal, Ottawa,Regina, Kingston, New Minas, and New Glasgow. 
Future Shop’s final demise came on March 28, 2015, when Best Buy Canada announced that Future Shop had ceased business, effective immediately. 66 locations were permanently closed, and the remaining 65 locations were soft launched as Best Buy locations on April 4, 2015. Best Buy said that  these closures and re-brandings were intended to reduce redundancy, as the affected stores were located within close proximity of a Best Buy. 

It’s sad that Best Buy had to get rid of Future Shop. But at the same time why did they wait so long to get rid of Future shop. They had Future Shops right next to Best Buys in some cases. 
I hope that you enjoyed this lost history post about Future Shop. 
Until next Post 
-DZ 

Comments

  1. Retail RetellJune 11, 2019 at 9:34 PM

    Nice post! I'd never heard of Future Shop before; seems like they had an interesting past. If I remember correctly, the early 2000s was also the time period when Best Buy acquired Sam Goody and some other similar brands in the US, so they must have been on a buying spree at that time! It's cool they let the brand stay intact, but at the same time a bit nonsensical once you hear that they went ahead and introduced Best Buy stores to the market anyway. And with the way they placed some of those stores so close to existing Future Shops, it's almost as if they wanted the Future Shops to fail! So strange...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. DomJune 12, 2019 at 5:07 PM

      I know right. Best Buy shouldn't have opened their own locations in the first place

      Delete

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