Best Buy launching mobile lifestyle stores

Big-box electronics retailer Big Buy is focusing on the smaller box when it comes to mobile. Today it announced the launch of a new type of retail store focused entirely on mobile products but with an emphasis beyond the standard cellphone.

Called Mobile Life Stores, three of the new venues are launching this month in malls in the Minneapolis, Chicago and Washington, D.C., areas. Instead of just selling phones, though, the businesses will focus on what Best Buy Mobile marketing vice president Scott Moore called a mobile lifestyle and feature-connected laptops, data devices and consumer electronics appliances that connect back to the mobile network. For instance, “experience zones” at the new stores will demonstrate how Slingbox can be used to place-shift TV content to a mobile phone or laptop, Moore said.

“These stores are going after a much bigger space than mobile phone retail competency,” Moore said. While the great majority of these devices will be available at big-box Best Buy stores, Best Buy Mobile Life stores will concentrate them in a single location and emphasize how they all fit into a larger wireless and connected environment, Moore said.

While Best Buy has always been a retailer of mobile devices, last year it upped its mobile efforts by partnering with Carphone Warehouse, the leading UK retailer of mobile devices. That partnership led to Best Buy creating specialty mobile stores within stores, which offered much larger lines of devices and network service plans as well as a staff of highly trained associates to advise customers on device and network capabilities. It produced separate Best Buy Mobile stores on the East Coast that sold only mobile phones.

The Best Buy Mobile Life stores will be bigger than the Best Buy Mobile stores--around 3000 square feet compared to 1000 square feet—though much smaller than a Best Buy proper, which usually encompasses 40,000 square feet. In addition to Best Buy’s sales associates, each store will have a Geek Squad agent on site to help troubleshoot and configure devices as well as answer technical questions.