Richfield

Best Buy wants to be that something blue in your wedding. The Richfield, Minn.-based electronics retailer is leaping into the lucrative wedding industry by launching its first gift registry, catching up to couples whose lives at home center around multimedia family rooms instead of dining rooms filled with the traditional bounty of crystal and china. Wedding registry kiosks, in the company's signature blue color, will begin rolling out to stores next month. Best Buy already quietly added a registry page to its website earlier this year and its mobile app will be updated with it next week.

Not so fast, Amazon.com. Best Buy has raised the stakes in the online shopping wars by offering an eye-popping holiday promotion: free two-day delivery on thousands of items on its website. The deal, which went live over the weekend, is an aggressive move by the electronics retailer to win over holiday shoppers who are especially concerned about shipping speed when making online purchases in the home stretch before Christmas. Best Buy hasn't yet announced an end date for the holiday delivery offer.

Best Buy will remodel the TV sections in most of its stores nationwide to add dedicated areas for Samsung and Sony. Best Buy said Thursday that it plans a massive expansion of its "store-within-a-store" concept, with Sony opening stores in 350 Best Buy locations and Samsung adding 500 new stores to its presence within Best Buy. Best Buy has been aggressively trying to remake the way it sells products, carving out space for individual brands in its big boxes in efforts to once again become a go-to destination for consumer electronics. 

Best Buy apparently told about 2,000 managers around the United States on Wednesday that they were being laid off, a move that would be the company's biggest job reduction since July 2012 as it continues to cut costs following a weaker-than-expected holiday season. The layoffs will affect about 1.4 percent of Best Buy's 145,000-person workforce, the Star Tribune learned. 

Best Buy said Thursday that it's laying off 950 of its Canadian employees, the first major cutback since the electronics retailer reported disappointing holiday sales earlier this month. The company said the layoffs affected 6 percent of its workforce in Canada and will not result in any store closings. At the end of January a year ago, Best Buy closed 15 stores in Canada. It currently has 265 stores in Canada and had 16,000 Canadian employees before the layoffs. The move is another sign of retrenchment from the upward trajectory the consumer electronics giant experienced for much of last year.

SNOW HILL -- At first glance, the Walmart that opened here last October looks like any other new Walmart you?d find around the state.It?s got the retailer?s ubiquitous yellow logo, a tan brick façade and silver floors. Once inside, however, Walmart customers are confronted with a store layout that runs counter to the retailer?s reputation for vastness. At 15,000 square feet, this Walmart Express is less than a 10th the size of the company?s massive SuperCenters, which can be 200,000 square feet or bigger. Walmart Expresses are popping up in rural towns across North Carolina as part of a