Best Buy is making a return to the U.S. online marketplace space, a decade after shutting down its first attempt.
During Best Buy’s recent Q4 earnings call, CEO Corie Barry added further details on the rollout and reaffirmed that the retailer will launch a new, more expansive, and curated third-party marketplace by mid-2025 — a move designed to deepen its digital reach and broaden its product assortment.
“A longer-term opportunity we are working on is marketplace,” Barry told analysts. “We have an established, growing third-party online marketplace in Canada, and we are planning to launch one in the U.S. We believe that as the trusted leader in consumer electronics (CE), we have an opportunity to leverage our positioning and assets to build a differentiated digital marketplace platform.”
Best Buy’s first online marketplace launched in 2011. In 2016, Best Buy shuttered it due to low sales and fierce competition from Amazon and others. Now, with a stronger digital infrastructure and learnings from its Canadian counterpart, the company is ready to re-enter the U.S. space with a more targeted and strategic offering, she told analysts.
With 200 million customers, 10 billion site visits annually, and 1 million weekly online transactions, Best Buy is betting that the time is right to reintroduce a marketplace that leverages both its digital scale and its reputation as a trusted tech destination.
Best Buy ranks No. 8 in the Top 2000. The database is Digital Commerce 360’s ranking of the largest North American online retailers. It falls under the Consumer Electronics category. Digital Commerce 360 projects Best Buy ecommerce sales in 2025 to decline 4.4% to $12.04 billion.
Best Buy push for more U.S. online sales
The update comes amid improving digital metrics. U.S. Best Buy online sales rose 2.6% year-over-year in Q4, and ecommerce accounted for 39.5% of total domestic revenue. That’s up from 38% last year.
“Our digital sales were almost 40% of total domestic sales this Q4, a slightly higher mix than last year,” Barry said. “We saw sales growth across digital assets, including the Best Buy app.”
She also pointed to changing consumer behavior as a driving force behind the renewed push.
“Customer shopping behavior is very different,” Barry said. “You have to underscore how much more shopping is done digitally and how much deeper into the catalog you can go digitally if you have the right partners in more of a marketplace kind of model.”
Launch plans for the new Best Buy online marketplace
The new U.S. marketplace is designed not just to offer more electronics. Best Buy also designed it to expand into complementary and adjacent product categories like health and wellness, phone accessories, and home theater add-ons.
“This will be a curated, tailored marketplace to the customer that is coming to shop with us and those deeper assortments that you would hope you could provide,” Barry told analysts.
At launch, the new Best Buy online marketplace will support in-store returns for third-party purchases. Over time, Best Buy will roll out capabilities such as fulfillment-as-a-service to help sellers manage logistics more efficiently.
“All potential sellers will go through a vetting process so we can ensure our customers receive the positive experience that they would expect at Best Buy,” Barry said.
Despite early investments and expected first-party sales cannibalization, Best Buy believes the new online marketplace will be a net financial positive.
“Even with startup costs, investments, and estimated cannibalization of our first-party product revenue, we expect marketplace to have a positive impact on our operating income rate in fiscal ’26,” Barry told analysts.
Chief financial officer Matt Bilunas added that the initiative will also fuel other revenue streams.
“We expect growth from Best Buy Ads and the rollout of our U.S. marketplace to benefit our gross profit rate.”
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