John Walden Quotations

Success to Best Buy is not measured by revenue. It's measured by how many consumers have experiences that are favorable, and that they are able to make a purchase on the telephone, Internet or catalog,

To complement our Best Buy stores over the course of two or three years, the company didn't really market the site, ... It was trying to pay attention to the world around it -- find out what might be possible with the Web site.

Dave's enthusiasm for the business energizes leaders and employees alike. He leverages customer insights to challenge traditional thinking and, in the end, shows solid strategic and financial results. He is a valuable leader who teaches our retail and corporate employees about the business. He helps us develop innovative strategies and grow customer- centric leaders.

We want to offer the consumer the most integrated way of doing business,

In 1998 we sacrificed short-term growth, but we built the foundation for an exciting and financially attractive long-term business.

I think the amount we learned from ourselves selling music was probably not as critical as looking at the marketplace, building the business around that vision,

The company, back in 1997, decided they needed to start experimenting with the Internet, not knowing how successful it would be, or frankly, even knowing what it would take to start a successful Internet business, ... It tried to figure out what it might need in the future, so the company put together a very simple site that sold music CDs. It was an easy category that didn't require a lot of investment.

Best Buy started recognizing that these categories (electronics) would be great categories over the Internet. The second thing was that building a competitive Internet channel was going to require capabilities and knowledge Best Buy frankly just didn't have, ... They recognized just how difficult that would be.

...We're trying to build the best of both worlds. We've created a wholly owned subsidiary of Best Buy, we've attracted unique talent with an incentive program, ... At the same time we're wholly owned by Best Buy, and we're creating incentives to take advantage of a shared consumer experience like integrating promotions and taking advantage of fulfillment from Best Buy. We're taking advantage of customer service and created an independent organization that we think is allowing us to build on some of the unique things Best Buy does.

I think the one distinction is that the store experience at traditional retailers is designed around how consumers react when they walk in the store, ... How do you select a product off the shelf? The same thought has to work for consumers on the Internet. They can click one button and be gone.