Best Buy Europe includes all of Carphone Warehouse stores.

UK - The European market is about to tighten further for local brand Harvey Norman with giant US consumer electronics retailer Best Buy to launch consumer electronics operations in 2009. Best Buy Europe, which also incorporates all of Carphone Warehouse's existing retail operations and its profit share from Best Buy Mobile, aims to double revenues and EBIT by March 2013.
 
Under the deal with Best Buy, Carphone Warehouse has put its 2,400 European and U.S. retail stores into the joint venture, in return for a cash payment of £1.1 billion from the U.S. retailer.

The companies said this week that they plan to open four to five large-format Best Buy stores in the UK this summer. Such "big box" outlets are about 30,000 square feet in size. Current year start-up costs would be up to £20m while next financial year start-up costs were said to be up to £30m and capex of £40m.

Carphone Warehouse CEO Charles Dunstone said in a release: "'Our plans for the Distribution venture, now named Best Buy Europe, are making very good progress, and we are confident of building a significant and profitable big box consumer electronics business in Europe over the coming years. We believe that investing in our business, people and proposition now is money well spent: consumer electronics retailing should be a vibrant, interactive and service-led experience for customers and our goal is to deliver exactly this."

Strong focus on service 
The companies said they believe that Europe is a highly attractive market for consumer electronics retailing. "Market growth is forecast to be strong, but the customer experience is often poor and we intend to introduce a differentiated proposition with a strong emphasis on service," it said in the release.