Monday, December 20, 2010

Best Buy Takes on Dick's and Sports Authority

When a category killer has finished killing off its category, what's the next step in growth? Moving into somebody else's category, it seems.

Best Buy is introducing health and fitness equipment, stuff that would seem more appropriate at Sports Authority.
A 30-foot-long in-store health and fitness presentation area enables consumers to sample many of these devices before they buy. On display are state-of-the-art heart rate monitoring watches, pedometers, special MP3 players, ear buds, headphones, yoga mats, scales, blood-pressure monitors and other products from leading manufacturers such as Gaiam, GoFit, H2O Audio, MIO, Polar, Sportline and Yurbuds.  

They are concentrating on techie sports equipment, which lends some logic to their actions, but it does beg the question of what the next move might be.