Reacting to a 14.7% decline in same store sales for the month of December in its mall-based music and video store chains, Best Buy announced plans today to close 110 Musicland stores. Ninety SamGoody stores and twenty Suncoast Video outlets, with leases up this month, will cease operations.
The Sam Goody closings represent an accelerating trend for Best Buy, which pulled the plug on 30 of the record stores in 2002. The continuing drop in sales of recorded music as well as declines in mall traffic were cited as reasons for the sales decline.
While both Sam Goody and Suncoast carry some products in the categories we cover, Suncoast carries a significant range of action figures, CCGs, anime, and more recently, manga (see 'Suncoast Adds Manga Spinners'). It appears to have fared somewhat better than the Sam Goody stores, but it also has a challenging environment in the form of relentless price competition from discounters on the top DVD releases. 
