Best Buy’s Secrets for Thriving in the Amazon Age - The New York Times

tl;dr: be the sole survivor in your brick-and-mortar retail category; on the other hand, Toys ‘R’ Us Files for Bankruptcy, Crippled by Competition and Debt

"Mr. Joly didn’t explicitly tell me this, but it is obvious: Best Buy has benefited from some serious good fortune.

It’s lucky that the products it specializes in selling, like big-screen TVs and high-end audio equipment, are big-ticket items that many customers still feel uncomfortable buying sight unseen from a website. It’s lucky that several large competitors have gone out of business, shrinking its list of rivals. And it’s lucky that the vendors who make the products it sells, like Apple and Samsung, have kept churning out expensive blockbuster gadgets.

“They’re at the mercy of the product cycles,” said Stephen Baker, a tech industry analyst at NPD Group. “If people stop buying PCs or they don’t care about big-screen TVs anymore, they have a challenge.”"

Best Buy’s Secrets for Thriving in the Amazon Age - The New York Times