Dive Brief:

• Best Buy is folding its Future Shop chain in Canada, a home-grown electronics chain that the company bought in 2001, to concentrate on its flagship brand.

• The move will close 66 of the chain’s stores and re-brand and re-open 65 others as Best Buy stores, for a total of 192 Best Buy stores in Canada. Some 500 full-time employees and 1,000 part-time employees will be affected by the changes.

• Best Buy said it will spend some 200 million Canadian dollars ($160 million) in the next year or two to fold the Future Shop stores into the Best Buy brand.

Dive Insight:

It looks like the Future Shop is past, a move that will likely feel like a loss to many Canadians — the chain was founded in 1982 in Vancouver. But it hasn’t made sense for Best Buy to continue with the chain as a separate entity; in some areas they were practically competitors. That, at a time when electronics stores face falling sales and increasing price pressures.

The move is also the latest sign that Canada can be a tough market for U.S. retail companies. 

“For more than a decade, having two brands and even two stores typically only minutes apart actually worked,” said Best Buy spokesperson Matt Furman. “What’s changed now is that the market is not growing in Canada. What we need now are fewer but better stores and a single brand we can invest in.”