INDEPENDENCE, Mo. — To Neng Yang, the Best Buy store is just too overwhelming — so much so that she only shops there once a year, at the holidays.
So when she needed a new cellphone, she bypassed the 55,000-square-foot store with its many departments — appliances, big-screen TVs, computers, cameras, car audio, video and music. Instead, she stopped across the street at the Best Buy Mobile store.
The slimmed-down, 850-square-foot sister store concentrates only on mobile devices.
“I ask about a thousand questions, and this is more personalized, more one-on-one attention,” said Yang, of Blue Springs, Mo.
Yang bought a white Droid Razr, and her brother John Yang picked up a black one.
Bigger is not always better. Just ask the biggest retailers in the country — and their customers.
The recession and the growth of online shopping have conspired to cut chains down to size. One strategy they’ve employed has been to close underperforming stores. But Best Buy and an increasing number of companies are trying another strategy too — going smaller.
Among the retailers testing smaller concepts are Blockbuster, now owned by Douglas County-based Dish Network, Ann Taylor, Gap, Kohl’s, Lowe’s and Englewood-based Sports Authority. RadioShack is even is trying a “store within a store” format in several OfficeMax stores in California.
Restaurants are also thinking small, including Leawood, Kan.-based Houlihan’s Restaurants, which has restaurants in 17 states.
Lower square footage makes for lower construction and remodeling costs, and that also tends to make them easier to finance. The smaller locations have less overhead costs and can be manned by fewer employees.
The small size also gives the chains more flexibility in locations, allowing them to squeeze into heavily developed urban centers, and compact spaces in airports, college campuses and strip centers. If the location isn’t successful, the chains can close the sites down with less financial fallout.
“For a decade it was ‘build it and they will come,’ ” said Candace Corlett, president of WSL Strategic Retail in New York. “It’s definitely a correction for retailers as well as restaurants, a direct result of consumers not having as much to spend on the extras. The strategy has to be to reduce your costs to offset less traffic. Usually that means less rent, shrinking retail and restaurants.”
Jeff Green, president of Jeff Green Partners, Phoenix-based real estate consultants, has long criticized the “bigger is better” movement.
“They think the bigger they are the more exciting they are and that’s not necessarily the case, as Apple has proven,” Green said. “Consumers like the smaller stores, like to be part of a ‘happening,’ and smaller stores have that feel.”
When retailers like Ann Taylor, Chico’s and Gap opened larger stores, they didn’t necessarily see an equivalent rise in sales, if any rise at all, that would justify the added expense, Green said.
“Any retailer that is opening larger and larger stores, I question their long-term viability,” Green said. “Costco and Sam’s Club defy that theory. That’s because consumers really perceive them as great values and value trumps the inconvenience of size.”
Best Buy introduced its mobile locations in 2007 and there are about 260 nationwide, including the Independence Best Buy Mobile store, which opened in August. Best Buy has about 1,100 full-size stores.
“The customer wants a different shopping experience. We don’t work on commission, and we carry everybody,” said Kyle Cochran, manager of the Independence store, which is tucked between two specialty stores on the lower level of the Independence Center mall.
