Best Buy Minimizes Iconic Price Tag In New Logo

As part of a rebranding effort, Best Buy has updated its famous logo. The new design moves the company’s wordmark outside the giant yellow tag, making it a less noticeable part of the layout, The Verge reported.

“The updated logo is true to our heritage, but it’s really cleaned up,” Best Buy Chief Marketing Officer Whit Alexander said in an article on the retailer’s website. “It’s an evolution toward the future, and we’re really excited about that.”

Best Buy said the rebranding is “designed to highlight our culture, our expertise and our talented employees.” But The Verge offered another interpretation: It’s minimizing the price bag as brick-and-mortar retail diminishes.

The news comes as Best Buy is opening its first big box store in seven years — a 36,000-square-foot store in a suburb of Salt Lake City. The store is located in a mixed-use development called Station Park and is scheduled to open in the fall, the StarTribune reported.

“We’re excited to be opening a brand new store in a popular shopping center in a growing part of the Salt Lake City market,” Jeff Shelman, a Best Buy spokesman, told the StarTribune in April. Shelman declined to tell the newspaper if Best Buy has any more stores in development.

Best Buy has been closing around a dozen stores each year. In 2017, for example, the retailer closed 18 stores and 11 stores in 2016. Back in 2011, Best Buy opened seven new stores. Since then, it has only opened a few locations in Mexico and Canada. Today, Best Buy has just over 1,000 stores in the U.S.

The news comes as Best Buy plans to shutter its 250 mobile phone stores in the U.S. by May. The stores are not as lucrative as they once were since the smartphone market’s maturation, The Wall Street Journal reported.