Best Buy: Just another big box?

Driving from Berlin to Brussels last week provided the opportunity to see European strip mall-style retailing at its most elemental.

Box boxes abounded and although the names on the fascias varied, the general form was the same. This is budget building with few, if any, surprises and it was easy to see that if any of the names had been removed and replaced with those found in UK retail parks, there wouldn’t really have been a great deal of difference..

Interesting therefore that this is the week in which US electricals giant Best Buy finally flings wide its doors in Thurrock, its chosen UK debut location, as it embarks on what many are predicting will be a takeover bid for the electricals market in this country.

Whether this proves to be the case remains to be seen, but one thing seems almost certain: This will be another example of big box retailing at its least imaginative. Drive past the Thurrock store-to-be and the yellow and blue logo is certainly large, but it will be a real bombshell if the interior is in any measure appreciably different from its rivals’.

Perhaps this is not the point. After all, you’ve got to hand it to Best Buy, and a lot of people probably will, this is a retailer that intends to make its mark. Best Buy field marketers were out in force in Croydon yesterday.

Croydon? As the crow flies, Croydon is more than 30 miles away from Thurrock and yet passers-by were being invited to take part in a competition that would give the winner an HD telly. The aim, according to the Best Buy uniformed marketers, was to raise awareness of the retailer in a country where it is virtually unknown.

And you have to assume that if this was being done in Croydon, then similar exercises were taking place in Bromley, Romford and sundry other large London satellite towns. We may not care for it when we get there, but Best Buy is determined that we’ll know about it, for better or worse.

The merchandise will be competitively priced and the range will be large, but the environment will be, errr, utilitarian. There is probably still an opportunity to create a big box format that actually appeals on an aesthetic level - in the same way as takes place on high streets.

Meanwhile, the probability is that we are about to witness another big box arrival, joining all of the others.