Best Buy reinventing itself in S.A.

Customers walking out of Best Buy Mobile Wednesday August 15, 2012 at Ingram Park Mall. Customers walking out of Best Buy Mobile Wednesday August 15, 2012 at Ingram Park Mall. Photo: Julysa Sosa, San Antonio Express-News Photo: Julysa Sosa, San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Best Buy reinventing itself in S.A. 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

As electronics retailer Best Buy prepares officially to shutter one of its big-box stores on the Northeast Side, the company already has moved on its plans to transform its presence in the San Antonio area.

On Aug. 30, Best Buy's most recently constructed location, at 6218 Wood Glen Drive, will close its doors as part of an effort to trim costs nationwide.

However, on Wednesday, the Minnesota-based company opened its third smaller and more profitable Best Buy Mobile store in the city.

Those smaller locations, which allow Best Buy to save money on retail space, focus on providing mobile devices, from tablets and cellphones to broadband cards, as well as carriers.

And Saturday, the retailer will unveil the first of a regionwide redesign of its nine remaining big-box locations. The first store in the area will be in the Forum, located at 8210 Agora Parkway in Selma.

“San Antonio is one of two select cities that will be full-market, which means every store will be remodeled and retouched,” District Manager John Dusek said. The other city is Minneapolis. “We are completely remodeling the stores and updating them with more interactive displays and functionality for our customers and employees.”

The redesign is part of a new concept called “connected stores.”

Connected stores will feature a larger, more centrally located technical support crew, also called the Geek Squad, which Dusek said will focus on educating customers about new electronic devices.

In these stores, showrooms will be converted to look more like various parts of the home, so customers can better envision what systems will look like in a living room, kitchen, game room or backyard.

By Nov. 9, every big-box store in San Antonio will have been remodeled, said Dusek, adding that other cities will see similar changes at only a portion of their traditional Best Buy stores.

Additionally, “we are adding nine to 14 Best Buy Mobile stand-alone stores in San Antonio, and they will open all the way through November as well,” Dusek said. “Alamo Ranch, The Rim, De Zavala (Road) — all over the city, quite frankly, and most of them are under construction right now.”

The company currently has 305 Best Buy Mobile stores and expects to open 100 in its current fiscal year, including San Antonio's third, which opened Wednesday at 2747 Southeast Military Drive.

That location joins the city's two others at Ingram Park Mall and Park North shopping center, which opened in 2010 and on Aug. 1, respectively.

“I can get in and out without a lot of effort,” said Edwin Santos, a 26-year-old active-duty Marine who stopped by the Park North location Monday night to fix a problem with his mobile phone. He left within minutes.

“I actually live closer to the bigger (Best Buy) store” off Loop 410 and Wurzbach Road, Santos said, “but there's always so many people. Here you can get help (or) get an upgrade, and you don't have to worry about people bumping into you.”

Dusek said each Best Buy Mobile store requires about 15 employees, more than compensating for the 49 workers at the Woodlake Parkway location who received pink slips in March.

The company had announced a total of 50 big-box stores across the nation would close in order to revamp the struggling chain by cutting 400 corporate jobs and trimming $800 million in costs.

About 90 percent of the Woodlake Parkway employees secured another position within the company, with the remainder opting to leave with a severance package, Dusek said.

nmorton@express-news.net