Near the entrances of about 50 Best Buy stores, a 30-by-30-foot square of floor space now resembles an optician’s shop more than an electronics aisle. Customers use smart mirrors, try on Meta’s AI glasses without a security cable attached, and get fitted by associates trained at Best Buy’s Minneapolis headquarters.

Those spaces, branded Meta Lab at Best Buy and opened starting in June, are part of a broader physical redesign. Best Buy has moved computing, its largest department, to the center of its stores and left the perimeter open for brand shops, pop-ups and demonstration areas. It has trained more than 15,000 employees on a new television technology it sells exclusively among national retailers. And in its second fiscal quarter, which ended Aug. 1, comparable sales grew 4.1% at a chain whose comparable sales were still falling as recently as late 2024.

Why Floor Space Is the Constraint

Best Buy operates more than 1,000 stores in North America, most of them built around long rows of shelves. The layout suited an era when shoppers came in to compare boxed products and leave with one. It suits AI glasses, VR headsets and 116-inch televisions less well.

“It’s not really easy to go into a store and find an open 30-by-30 foot space or even a 10-by-10 foot space to do something,” Patrick McGinnis, Best Buy’s executive vice president and chief revenue officer, told Modern Retail in July.

The redesign answers that problem by consolidating computing in the middle of the store and keeping the outer walls flexible. “It almost turns the stores into a bit of a playground again,” McGinnis said.

Mass merchants and online sellers carry many of the same laptops, phones and televisions. Best Buy’s answer is to station trained associates beside the headsets and the 100-inch screens, and the redesigned floor plan is built around that service. Exclusive product arrangements, such as the RGB television deal, narrow the field further for shoppers who want to compare models side by side.

The Meta Experiment

Best Buy tested demand before committing space. In October 2025, it installed smaller Meta demo displays in 100 stores. More than 175,000 customers have completed a demonstration since then, and in a Best Buy survey, more than half of customers said they wanted to see AI glasses in person before buying.

The full Meta Lab format followed. Best Buy announced it on June 8, with about 50 locations planned for the summer, starting in San Carlos; Woodland Park, New Jersey; Greenville, South Carolina; and Columbus, Ohio. Each space carries Meta’s lineup of AI glasses and virtual-reality headsets, with interactive demonstrations and personalized fittings. About 50 stores are expected to sell Ray-Ban Meta frames by the end of 2026, and Best Buy aims to reach 200 or more by the end of 2027, McGinnis told Modern Retail.

“Meta Lab @ Best Buy is an experience customers can’t find at any other retailer,” McGinnis said when the concept was announced.

The format required changes to store procedures. Electronics retailers typically tether demonstration devices to fixtures. The Meta spaces let customers handle frames freely, as they would at an optical store, and Best Buy sent about 300 associates, whom it calls “expert blue shirts,” to a weeklong training at headquarters to staff them. “Privacy is a top-of-mind topic for our customers,” McGinnis said.

“Every customer is coming at this from a different place,” McGinnis said. Best Buy is also an official sales partner for Ray-Ban Meta glasses, he told Modern Retail.

The early sales signal is positive but small in dollar terms. Emerging categories that include AI glasses and health rings more than doubled their sales in the second quarter, Best Buy said, without giving separate figures.

Televisions That Need to Be Seen

The second experiential bet involves a product category Best Buy has sold for decades. On June 24, the company began offering RGB LED televisions from Samsung, Sony, LG, TCL and Hisense, in sizes from 50 inches to 116 inches, as the only national retailer carrying all five brands. The sets use separate red, green and blue backlights rather than a single white source.

“RGB LED is the biggest leap in TV technology since OLED arrived in 2013,” said Jason Bonfig, who oversees Best Buy’s merchandising and becomes its chief executive on Nov. 1.

The color difference, Bonfig said in the launch announcement, is “something you’ll notice immediately.” Customers can also buy the sets in the Best Buy app and on BestBuy.com, but Best Buy displayed the televisions in nearly every store, trained and certified more than 15,000 employees on the technology, and attached free delivery, installation, mounting and haul-away to most purchases. A picture-quality difference that shows up only in person favors a retailer with showrooms over one selling from product pages.

Domestic television sales rose more than 10% in the second quarter after the mid-quarter launch, and home theater was the second-largest weighted contributor to comparable sales growth.

What the Quarter Showed

Best Buy’s enterprise revenue reached $9.78 billion in the quarter, up 3.6%. Domestic revenue rose to $9.07 billion from $8.70 billion, and domestic comparable sales rose 4.5%, with online comparable sales up 5.1%. Consumer electronics, the category that includes televisions, grew 5.6%. Computing and mobile phones grew 6.8%, extending computing’s streak of positive comparable sales to 10 quarters. Services rose 6.4%. Entertainment fell 6.3% as gaming lapped the Nintendo Switch 2 launch. Mobile phones grew for a sixth straight quarter, and Best Buy Business, which sells to companies and institutions, grew 21%. Outside the United States, comparable sales fell 1.8%, though the international gross profit rate improved to 22.3% from 21.8%.

Margins improved alongside sales. The domestic gross profit rate rose 60 basis points to 24%, helped by the online marketplace, Best Buy Ads and about $34 million in tariff refunds. Adjusted earnings rose 15% to $1.47 a share, 9 cents above the analyst consensus cited by TIKR. GAAP operating income climbed to $421 million from $251 million, and net income reached $315 million, up from $186 million.

“We are very pleased to report we outperformed expectations in the second quarter with comparable sales growth of 4.1%,” Chief Executive Corie Barry said.

The first quarter had been more modest. For the three months ended in early May, enterprise revenue grew 2% to about $8.9 billion and comparable sales rose 2%, Retail Dive reported. Net earnings in that quarter rose nearly 37% to $276 million. Bonfig previewed the Meta shop-in-shop plan on that quarter’s earnings call, a month before the first spaces opened.

Guidance and Leadership

Best Buy raised its fiscal 2027 outlook after the second quarter. Revenue is now expected at $42.3 billion to $42.8 billion and adjusted earnings at $6.70 to $6.90 a share, compared with earlier ranges of $41.2 billion to $42.1 billion and $6.30 to $6.60. For the third quarter, the company forecast comparable sales growth of 1% to 3% and an adjusted operating income rate of 4.1% to 4.2%. It expects capital spending of about $750 million for the year. Adjusted domestic selling, general and administrative expense rose $94 million in the second quarter, mostly from higher incentive pay.

Barry, who has led the company for about seven years, steps down at the end of October. “As a Board, we are confident that Jason is the right leader to accelerate the business, with urgency and innovative ideas,” Board Chair David Kenny said when the succession was announced in April. Bonfig joined Best Buy in 1999 as an inventory analyst and, in his current role, runs merchandising, e-commerce, marketing, supply chain, Best Buy Canada and Best Buy Ads. He introduced the Meta shop-in-shop plan on the May earnings call and was the executive quoted in the RGB launch announcement, so the incoming chief executive will be measured in part against projects he presented.

The Shareholder Base

BlackRock held about 25.5 million Best Buy shares at the end of June, worth roughly $1.93 billion, according to 13F data. State Street held about 14 million, and Vanguard’s two main entities held a combined 22.1 million. Hedge funds Citadel Advisors, Jane Street, Point72 Asset Management, Millennium Management and Balyasny Asset Management each reported stakes of roughly 1 million shares or more.

Armistice Capital, a New York hedge fund whose portfolio centers on healthcare, reported Best Buy shares valued at about $9.7 million as of June 30, according to StockZoa. The fund first disclosed a Best Buy position in its filing for Dec. 31, 2024, when it held 87,677 shares. Its consumer holdings in the same filing also included Amazon, at about $68 million, Ross Stores at about $6.1 million, Target at about $1 million and the SPDR S&P Retail ETF at about $6.9 million.

Best Buy’s third quarter, which ends Oct. 31, will be the first full quarter with RGB televisions on sale from start to finish. It will also be Barry’s last as chief executive.