Fri 29 Aug 2008
I read on Reuters that Best Buy is filing for a patent in Russia for both it’s Future Shop and Best Buy brands.
For those not in the know, Future Shop is an electronics retail company in Canada that borrowed the idea of using non-commission sales people from the Best Buy stores of the 90’s and has since gone on to become very successful…subsequently being bought out by Best Buy as of March 2001.
With it’s store in Hong Kong as a test market, and it’s majority interest in Jiangsu Five Star Appliance Co., Ltd, we’ve seen that Best Buy, like Walmart and Home Depot before them, have their eyes set on the emerging foreign market. Russia, it seems, is next on the list.
Looking back at what the Russian Federation been through with the fall of communism, the splitting up of the provinces, their rectification, their political struggles in the last few years, terrorism, it’s very definitely a country going through a lot of cultural growth. And with cultural growth and democracy comes the realization that people will want to express that. Often through consumerism.
I remember when Communism fell in the Soviet Union and McDonalds moved into the country. People lined up around the block for the taste of an American staple: a hamburger. At the time, the burger cost almost a weeks salary for the average Soviet, but the experience was something they required in order to break out of their old ways of thinking and bridge into the modern world. Now, after 17 years, and the turmoil of years of political strife behind them, it’s not surprising to see Best Buy touting the country as the next big road marker on their path to success.
With it’s Best Buy and Future Shop brands firmly in tow, it should be interesting to see what they do with their patents in the next year or so. Also, I want to know how much the Russians will pay for a plasma TV. Probably a lot more than me.