All Best Buy Small Mobile Stores Closing By End Of May: Report

Best Buy is closing all 250 of its small-format mobile phone stores, most of which are located in malls, according to multiple reports.

The U.S. stores will close by the end of May, Reuters reports. According to the report in Reuters, the stores contribute just over 1 percent to the company's overall revenue.

Employees were told of the closings on Wednesday, according to an internal letter obtained by The Minneapolis Star Tribune. The letter said the closings were part of a strategy of "continuous optimization." The company first began operating the stores in 2006.

“The mobile phone business was in a period of high growth and margins were high,” CEO Hubert Joly wrote in the letter. “Fast-forward to 2018 and the mobile phone business has matured, margins have compressed and the cost of operations in our mobile stand-alone stores is higher than in our big box stores.”

Best Buy plans to continue selling mobile phones through its regular stores.

According to Reuters, Best Buy will help employees affected by the closings look for other jobs within the company. Employees who leave after May 31 will be offered severance and the company will help them with an external job search.

>>>Read more via Reuters.

>>>Read more via The Minneapolis-Star Tribune.

Best Buy did not immediately reply to an inquiry by Patch.

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