Best Buy to convert East Northport store to its 1st discount outlet in New York State

Best Buy plans to convert its East Northport store to its first discount outlet in New York State, as the retailer works to reduce its footprint nationwide and diversify its store portfolio.

The retailer’s outlets sell clearance, open-box and refurbished electronics and appliances at up to 40% off, supporting “value-focused customers.”

“Best Buy Outlet stores have an expanded assortment of products and a Geek Squad area to get support on the latest tech,” said a spokesman for Best Buy Co. Inc., which is based in Richfield, Minnesota.

The East Northport store, located at 3124 Jericho Tpke. in the Huntington Square shopping center, will close temporarily March 2 to be remodeled as an outlet and reopen this summer, he said.

A spokesman did not respond to a Newsday inquiry about how many employees work at the store and whether any would be laid off.

(The store has an East Northport mailing address but it is actually in Elwood. Best Buy refers to it as its Commack store.)

The closest Best Buy to the East Northport store is 5.5 miles away at 148 Walt Whitman Rd. in Huntington Station.

Since 2022, Best Buy has opened six outlets, bringing the total to 22 in 16 states, including California, Minnesota, Texas and New Jersey, according to the retailer’s website.

Best Buy is opening outlets, which are being converted from existing regular stores or opened in new locations, partly because they boost profit on returned items, the retailer has said.

“These stores are driving a higher mix of new and reengaged customers, in addition to a better financial recovery on open-box and return product. Over time, we believe we can also leverage these outlet locations to help our vendor community with their own open box and refurbished goods that are coming from other channels,” Best Buy Chief Executive Officer Corie Barry told analysts during an earnings call last March.

As more customers shift to online shopping, Best Buy has been closing some of its regular stores as their leases come up for renewal and opening smaller stores, finding that it needs less space to sell merchandise and more fulfillment and inventory space, she told analysts in November.

Over the past five years, Best Buy has closed about 100 regular stores in the United States, leaving it with 901, including 10 on Long Island. 

Best Buy also is opening a few smaller stores in areas where it has no presence in order to test the effects of adding new locations, Barry said in November. 

Best Buy, which opened its 47,006-square-foot East Northport store in 2001, will not be reducing the amount of space it is leasing for the store, said Kyle Irwin, leasing manager for the Northeast at Sterling Organization, the West Palm Beach, Florida, real estate firm that owns Huntington Square.

With the changes to its store footprint, Best Buy is reviewing all of its business operations, especially in markets where it already has a strong presence, said Joe Feldman, senior managing director and retail analyst at Telsey Advisory Group, a brokerage firm in Manhattan.

“Outlets have been performing well for them. [But] they’re not going to move everyone to an outlet format,” he said.

Total sales have been down at Best Buy for the past two years, falling 10.6% to $46.3 billion in 2022 compared with 2021. Wall Street analysts are projecting that sales in 2023 declined by 6.3%.

But Best Buy has been able to maintain decent profitability by operating efficiently, Feldman said.

By Tory N. Parrish

tory.parrish@newsday.comToryParrish1

Tory N. Parrish covers retail and small business for Newsday. She has worked at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and Observer-Dispatch in Utica, N.Y.