It's no secret that brick-and-mortar retail has been hit hard by the influence of the recent Coronavirus Pandemic. The closing of non-essential businesses and social distancing to help flatten the curve of infection is a critical element of lowering mortality rates and preventing an overtaxing of hospital infrastructure. Best Buy ($BBY), in particular, has found itself in interesting times as a result of shelter-in-place orders.
By aggressively implementing practices to facilitate continued operation, Best Buy has maintained a reported 70% of year-over-year sales despite closing 40 locations and limiting physical stores to curbside pickup only. It has seen an uptick in 250% of online purchases, with around 50% of those customers utilizing the curbside service. As of April 19, CEO Corie Barry will forego 50% of their base salary and the Board of Directors will be foregoing 50% of cash retainer fees to help weather this troubling time.
After lockdown and self-quarantine orders began to be issued across the globe, Best Buy saw an increase in purchase in work-from-home, food preservation, and at-home learning products that helped the company maintain relevancy in the stock market with a comparatively modest decrease in stock valuation. A rise in video game sales has continued to remain a strong motive force in its sales projections.
Perhaps seeking to maintain this trend, Best Buy has listed a shocking number of items on sale. As of April 9, some 80.3K items are presently discounted. As shown in this graph, that number is far in excess as compared to any previous data.
The average discount percentage is relatively smaller, as reflected here. For instance, on April 4, the average discount percentage was 21.16% while on April 9, that number was 11.924%.
Despite maintaining respectable sales through this crisis, Best Buy announced that as of April 19 they will be furloughing 51K part-time employees while maintaining 81% of full-time workers.
Logically Job Postings had seen a corresponding drop before this announcement was made.
An adaptive and responsive business plan to remain ahead of the curve of the effects of flattening the curve might help Best Buy maintain the edge it needs to remain solvent in the COVID-19 pandemic.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using the information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.