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Comment by zerotolerance | Hacker News Reader

Barnes and Noble had a huge high-margin section, just like Best Buy did... their ridiculous physical video and music section. I think the availability of streaming services did as much to hurt those "book" stores as reasonable competition from Amazon.

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Is best buy going out of business too? I had a surreal experience while trying to buy a camera lens at Best Buy. The employee in the camera section first directed me to phone camera addons (cool, but not what I wanted) then once explained that I wanted camera accessories (I gestured like I was taking a picture) I was eventually lead to the camera section. I was able to find the Nikon lenses eventually, and the employee returned... I was hoping he'd explain to me what lens would be good for zooming in, but instead he fiddled with the floor model until he managed to take a picture with it, showed me the picture and said, triumphantly, "camera." I gave up and left.

I was wondering about Best Buy too. Does anyone know what's going on with them?

Last I heard (2017), they were trying hard to be more "on-demand" in response to Amazon. They were quite fully aware of people "demoing" items in store and buying them online, so they dropped prices and updated their e-commerce. If it worked is a separate question entirely...

> Barnes and Noble had a huge high-margin section, just like Best Buy did... their ridiculous physical video and music section.

They didn't have that as a large section until deep into the time Amazon was eating their book sales; I'm pretty sure it was a response to the competition from Amazon.

>Best Buy You mean circuit city?

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