Best Buy has returned to St. Albert, but it looks a little different.
That’s because the new store, located at 386 St. Albert Trail, has a much smaller footprint than the Erin Ridge location that shut down in 2019.
It’s one of 167 “small format” (on average 2,000 square feet) stores that started launching across Canada in June. The first store of this type opened in Sherwood Park two years ago.
“Getting something to be a little bit more of a neighborhood type store from a convenience perspective has been a very big part of our strategy,” said Chris Sallans, a spokesperson for Best Buy Canada. “We know that getting closer to the customer is the most convenient for the customer.”
The St. Albert Best Buy, which opened on July 5, is also a test case for the company.
It’s the first time they have opened a store in a space that originally housed a restaurant.
“It’s a very unique type of site from where we would traditionally build our stores,” Sallans said. “They have lower ceilings. The logistics for loading and unloading inventory is very different for us, but it's very important, because as we look to expand our small store strategy into markets where we've never been before, there are a lot more [restaurant-type] locations available to us than there are the more traditional, what people think of as a ‘big box’ type locations.”
Leaving St. Albert five years ago was a difficult decision for the company, Sallans said.
“By walking away from that market, we were walking away from a lot of customers,” he said.
The company has wanted to return to St. Albert since it shut down the Erin Ridge store, he said.
The small format stores carry 90 per cent of the inventory found in a traditional Best Buy.
“Roughly half of that is out on the sales floor, where you can see it, and then the other 40 per cent is in the back warehouse,” Sallans said.
While inventory levels aren’t much different between the small format and traditional stores, the small format stores have fewer items out on display.
In a report released by the company this May, Best Buy announced that its first quarter sales dipped 6.1 per cent in comparison the same time window in 2023.
It expects to make between $43.8 billion and $45.2 billion this year.
