Best Buy Dips Its Toes Into Skincare Products and Outdoor Furniture

May 10, 2022 Topic: Business Blog Brand: The Buzz Tags: Best BuyBusinessElectronicsCompaniesTechnology

Best Buy Dips Its Toes Into Skincare Products and Outdoor Furniture

In an unexpected move, the company is adding 100 skin-care devices at 300 of its stores

Best Buy announced last week its entrance into a pair of new product categories that are very different from what it has traditionally sold: beauty products and outdoor furniture, CNBC reported.

The company is adding 100 skin-care devices at 300 of its stores, including, per CNBC, “a facial steamer and at-home tool for microdermabrasion.”

In addition, Best Buy is rolling out premium patio furniture from the brand Yardbird, which it acquired last November. The company will add Yardbird displays, as well as some for e-bikes, in about ninety of its stores, per the report.

“One of the most exciting aspects of welcoming Yardbird into the Best Buy family is their commitment to sustainability. Like Best Buy, they strongly believe in bettering our environment, and do so by using eco-friendly materials from plastic that would have otherwise ended up in the ocean,” the company announced at the time of its acquisition.

“The company has also partnered with carbonfund.org to offset its carbon footprint, has meaningfully reduced its packaging material usage and uses recycled sources for some of their packaging materials.”

Best Buy also announced a new home recycling service earlier this spring.

“For $199.99, we’ll haul away and recycle up to a total of 2 large products (including TVs, major appliances, all-in-one computers, and monitors), along with an unlimited number of select smaller products,” the company says on its recycling website, while also listing the products that will be eligible.

The program, for that fee, will accept a total of two large devices—including televisions, computers, and major appliances—and it will accept an unlimited amount of smaller devices. Meanwhile, some products are not accepted, such as many musical instruments, batteries, CDs and DVDs, rooftop satellite dishes, and more.

“We feel we have an important role to play in helping our planet, including being there for the entire lifecycle of a product – from the time a customer starts shopping until that product is responsibly recycled,” Tim Dunn, Best Buy’s head of environmental sustainability, said in a press release at the time. “This new service will make this important work even more convenient for customers.”

Best Buy says that since 2009, it has helped its customers recycle more than two billion pounds of electronics and appliances.

It’s not clear when Best Buy will be announcing its earnings for the first quarter, although if the release arrives three months after the fourth-quarter earnings, the announcement will take place the first week of June. In that fourth-quarter release, Best Buy had predicted a comparable sales decline of 1 to 4 percent for the fiscal year of 2023.

Stephen Silver, a technology writer for The National Interest, is a journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philly Voice, Philadelphia Weekly, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Living Life Fearless, Backstage magazine, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.

Image: Reuters.