Company History : Richard M. Schultz Essay

Best Buy Co., Inc. is a multinational company in the United States and it deals, with consumer electronics, and accounts 19% of the business. The company also operates in Mexico, Puerto Rico, China, and Canada. Some of the subsidiaries of the company include CinemaNow, Geek Squad, Pacific Sales, and Magnolia Audio Video and operates in both Future Shop label, and Best Buy in Canada. Best Buy Co. Inc and its subsidiaries operate more than 1,150 stores internationally and domestically. The company also operates more than 100 “ZoomShops” or Buy Express Automated retail Stores, operated by the Zoom Systems, in both malls and airports in the entire country of the U.S. The company is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota, U.S (Scott,

Best Buy Co., Inc (Best Buy in short) is a Minnesota-based large electronic retail store in U.S, Canada and Mexico. As the predecessor of Best Buy, Richard M. Schulze established Sound of Music, Inc. in 1966, which is electronic store focusing on home and car stereo (Gibsons and Billings, 12).

The Headquarters of Best Buys is found in Richfield Minnesota. It is a large company with approximately 155,000 employees and 1,100 stores in the United States alone. It also has about 2,800 stores in other countries outside the Unite States. These countries include: Canada, Mexico, China and Turkey. To add on to this, it has a number of subsidiaries namely the Geek Squad, Pacific Sales, Future Shop and Magnolia Audio Videos. Its mission is making life fun and easy by making technology solve customer needs and helping the same customers to appreciate the benefits of technology. It also aims attaining sustainable growth and earnings through constantly changing its business model to suit the needs of the customers (Lal, 2006). It also strives to sell quality products along with maintaining a high level of employee training program in order for them to have extensive product knowledge.

A man named Richard M. Schulze and his partner started Best Buy in 1966. The original store was called “Sound of Music” which was an electronics store that specialized in stereo systems. In 1967, Sound of Music purchased Bergo Company and Kencraft Hi-Fi and pulled in about $1 million in revenue. In 1969, Schulze took his partners half and decided to become a public company on the NASDAQ exchange. What started as a single store in Saint Paul, Minnesota became a chain of nine stores by 1978. In the 1980’s, Sound of Music was left with seven stores because of unfortunate accidents caused by a tornado. In 1983, Sound of Music was renamed to Best Buy Company. Along side changing the name of the company they also decided to expand on business by selling other at home appliances such as VCRs.

Best Buy Inc. is the largest consumer electronic retail store chain in the United States. Best Buy Inc. is now a multinational business, headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota, with many stores in United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. It was founded in 1966 as an audio specialty store by name “Sound of Music”. It was renamed in 1983 as “Best Buy” after the famous “Tornado Sale” in its Minnesota store. It was listed on New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in 1987 and Standard and Poor (S&P) 500 in 1999. It was named “Company of the year” by Forbes magazine in 2004. Hubert Joly serves as the current CEO and the chairman of the company.

Best Buy Co., Inc. operates as a multinational retailer of consumer electronics within the services industry. Founded in 1966 under the name Sound of Music, Inc., Best Buy underwent a name change in 1988. It was founded by Mr. Richard M. Schulze and is headquartered in Richfield, Minnesota. Best Buy operates under a Board of Directors but is a publicly traded company owned by stockholders. The company operates retail stores and call centers and conducts online retail operations under a range of brand names such as Best Buy, Best Buy Mobile, The CarPhone Warehouse, Five Star, Future Shop, Geek

Drivers: On the supply side, IT would allow Best Buy to have nearly unlimited shelf space through its store online. Rather than keeping inventories, Best Buy would have agreements with certain suppliers to deliver the niche products directly to

     Best Buy was founded in 1966 by the current CEO Richard M. "Dick" Schulze. Based out of Eden Prairie, Minnesota the corporation currently has 446 stores and earned over 83 million in total revenue last year. Best Buy carries a wide variety of products consisting of Major Appliances, video and audio equipment, computers, software, music, and wireless technology. When analyzing this corporation it is important to pay close attention to its current and future services and products, any problems with the corporation, the future direction Best Buy is headed, what can be done for the corporation, and what it can do for you as a consumer or employee.

and Pacific Sales (only in US). Since, Best Buy has gone public and is traded on the

Best Buy’s corporate office is located in Richfield, Minnesota and was founded by Richard Schulze in 1966. Originally, Best Buy was known as Sound of Music before changing its name in 1983. Best Buy is one of the largest big box retail electronics providers in the world generating over $40 billion annually. They offer a wide array of technology products, services and solutions regionally and internationally. Best Buy sells video games, car stereos, DVD’s (Blu-Ray), cell phones, computers and software, video cameras, digital cameras,

Best Buy is the largest North American consumer electronics and appliance retail store. Beneath the direction of Brad Anderson, the CEO in 2006, Best Buy experienced some of its hardest times. There were countless forces and factors that contributed to the difficulty faced by Best Buy. The first major problem to be pointed out is that Best Buy is losing immense market share to Amazon, which had led to a practice of “showrooming” (Best Buy, 10). This term means customers are coming to view the product at Best Buy, and then proceeding to buy them online at a cheaper price. Resulting in these competitive prices taking away sales from Best Buy.

Best Buy has been in the consumer electronics business since the 90’s with a history that dates back to the 60’s and they have

Finally by 2004, Forbes magazine names Best Buy “Company of the Year” (Our History”). As mentioned before, customers want to know that they are getting the best for their buck. When Forbes magazine announced that Best Buy was the “Company of the Year”, it only made the companies business accelerate. Consumers read these reports

Best Buy is a US based multinational company that deals in consumer electronics goods. Headquarter of this company is in Richfield, Minnesota. This company operates in Canada and Mexico too. The specialty of the company is it works as a retailer that deals in consumer electronics goods, personal computers, entertainment software and appliances (City, 2010).

Best Buy Co., Inc. is one of the world’s leading companies that operates as a retailer of consumer electronics, home office products, entertainment software, appliances and related services in the United States, Canada, China, Europe and Mexico. It controls retail stores and websites under 11 brand names: Best Buy, Five Star Appliances, Future Shop, Geek Squad, Magnolia Audio Video, The Carphone Warehouse, Best Buy Mobile, and Audio visions, Napster, Pacific Sales and Speakeasy. Best Buy currently has about 165,000 employees worldwide. Best Buy is the largest retail store for electronics in the United States with almost 1800 stores as of July of last year. Best Buy has survived over the years despite the ever changing competitive retail market. They have managed to sustain profitability and have shown perseverance through the economic downfall. Best Buy has also emerged victorious over previous competitors such as Circuit City and Radio Shack. Although Best Buy has done a lot of things right in recent years to stay alive in this business, they also have some areas of growth that they need to resolve quickly or else there are some potential threats that could harm Best Buy.