Best Buy Now Delivers Appliances Next Day. You Don't

Best Buy told analysts Thursday morning that next-day major appliance delivery is now available in nearly all of its metro delivery markets. Last quarter it was less than half of them. That is one quarter to go from a coin flip to a default, on one of the exact categories a lot of independent high-ticket stores are built around.

The quarter itself was strong. Revenue came in at $9.78 billion, up 3.6% year over year. Comparable sales rose 4.1% against company guidance of roughly 1%. Adjusted earnings per share hit $1.47, up 15%. Management raised full-year guidance and the stock still fell about 1.3% on the day, which tells you what the market thinks of how the growth was bought. I run Ecommerce Paradise and coach store owners in appliances, outdoor gear, and home categories, so this one lands close to home.

The number that matters for your store is not the comp. It is the delivery promise, and the second thing management said about it: the appliance gains came partly out of product margin. Best Buy spent margin to buy speed, in the same quarter it wired Best Buy checkout into ChatGPT. Both of those change what your product page has to say between now and Black Friday. If you are still deciding which categories to build around, my breakdown of what high-ticket dropshipping actually is covers the economics this story is testing.

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Best Buy Q2 Comps Hit 4.1% as Next-Day Appliance Delivery Expands

Best Buy reported second quarter fiscal 2027 results before the open on Aug. 27. Revenue was $9.78 billion, beating the analyst consensus of $9.58 billion by 2.1%, according to StockStory’s breakdown of the quarter. Adjusted operating income rate rose about 40 basis points to 4.3%.

Major appliances posted only slight sales growth. Management credited it to four things: pricing, marketing, product availability, and faster delivery. Per the earnings call summary published by MarketBeat, next-day appliance availability now covers nearly all metro delivery locations compared with less than half in the first quarter.

Home theater was the second largest weighted comp contributor, with domestic television sales up more than 10% year over year. Incoming CEO Jason Bonfig credited assortment, inventory availability, delivery and installation improvements, and the launch of RGB television technology. Best Buy said it will be the only national retailer carrying RGB TVs for the next year.

Where the margin actually came from

Domestic gross profit rate rose 60 basis points to 24%. Two things drove that: growth in the marketplace and advertising businesses, and $34 million in tariff refunds. Those gains were partly offset by lower product margin rates, which management tied directly to the investments in major appliances.

Read that again, because it is the whole story. Best Buy gave up product margin points on appliances in order to promise next-day delivery, and then covered the hole with ad revenue, marketplace take rate, and a one-time refund from Washington. That is a funding structure, not a merchandising win.

The rest of the P&L

Computing was the largest weighted comp driver and posted its tenth consecutive quarter of positive comps. Best Buy Business sales rose 21% year over year, on more than $1.1 billion in annual sales growing 15% to 20% in the first half. Computing average selling prices rose in the mid-teens while units fell in the high single digits, which is memory cost inflation showing up at the shelf.

The US marketplace hit roughly $300 million in gross merchandise value for the quarter, and the company now expects $1.3 billion for the full year. Best Buy Ads collected $900 million last year and is on track to grow 10%. The company also began a phased rollout of Ask Blue, a conversational shopping assistant, and completed a commerce integration with OpenAI so customers can find and buy Best Buy products inside ChatGPT.

Guidance went up across the board: revenue of $42.3 billion to $42.8 billion, comps of 1.9% to 3%, adjusted EPS of $6.70 to $6.90, and capital expenditures around $750 million. Third quarter comps are guided to 1% to 3%, and August month-to-date was running at the high end of that range. Corie Barry said this was her final earnings call as CEO, with Bonfig taking over Nov. 1.

Shares still slid roughly 1.3% to $86.29 immediately after the print, which CNBC flagged as a beat-and-raise the market did not reward. Investors are reading the same line item you should: the appliance comp was purchased, not earned.

How Two Years of Store Closures Paid for Best Buy’s Delivery Speed

None of this appeared out of nowhere. Best Buy has been shrinking its store base by roughly 2.1% annually for two years, and revenue fell about 1.7% annually across the prior three years. Same-store sales were flat over that stretch. A retailer closing stores while comps go nowhere has one obvious move left, which is to convert fixed retail cost into fulfillment and higher-margin services.

That is exactly what happened. Ads, marketplace, and B2B are now carrying gross profit rate while the core product margin gets spent on speed. The delivery network was already paid for by the store closures. Turning it on for appliances in nearly every metro was a routing and inventory decision, not a new capital project.

The tariff refunds are the second funding source, and they are industry-wide right now. The Supreme Court ruled the IEEPA tariffs illegal in February, and the Court of International Trade ordered US Customs and Border Protection to refund them to the importer of record. The National Retail Federation’s rundown of the refund process notes that businesses paid over $160 billion in those tariffs and that CBP takes 60 to 90 days to issue a refund once a declaration is accepted.

Best Buy booked $34 million of that. Burlington booked $55 million and is putting the entire amount into lower prices, CEO Michael O’Sullivan told analysts on the same day. Guggenheim’s Simeon Siegel called the industry-wide version of this what it is, writing that “a promotion by any other name is still a promotion.” I covered the refund mechanics and who is eligible in yesterday’s post on the refund windfall.

What Next-Day Appliance Delivery Means for High-Ticket Stores

Your product page says something like “ships in 2 to 6 weeks, freight delivery, curbside.” Best Buy’s page for a comparable unit now says tomorrow, in most metros, with haul-away. The same shopper sees both in the same session. That gap is now the first objection you have to answer, not the third.

Run the math on why you cannot match it. On a $2,400 range at a 22% gross margin, you clear roughly $528 before ad spend. Take out a $180 cost per acquisition and you are at $348. Best Buy just gave up product margin points to fund next-day, backfilled by $900 million in ad revenue and a $34 million refund check. You have no ad network and no refund check, so trying to buy your way into that race costs you the entire order.

The good news is that Best Buy did not touch the products where you actually make money. There is no next-day promise on a $6,800 dual-fuel pro range, a 12-foot outdoor kitchen island, a swim spa, a commercial-grade smoker, or anything that requires a site survey and a configuration conversation. Nobody stocks those. That is your ground, and this quarter just made the boundary line clearer than it has been in years.

Three concrete shifts for your store

First, category selection now has a hard filter on it. If a SKU can sit in a regional distribution center and go out next-day, a national retailer will eventually own it. Products that need freight scheduling, install coordination, or spec matching are structurally safe. My high-ticket niches list flags which verticals sit on the safe side of that line.

Second, B2B demand is real and validated. Best Buy Business grew 21% on more than $1.1 billion in annual sales. Contractors, property managers, hospitality buyers, and facilities teams are placing large orders and they do not shop the same way consumers do. I wrote a full breakdown of why boring B2B niches are the best opening right now.

Third, discovery is moving. Best Buy customers can now find and buy products inside ChatGPT. Google Shopping is still the volume channel and my three-tier Shopping campaign structure still prints, but assistant-driven product discovery is no longer a 2027 problem. Your feed data and your on-page specs are what get you quoted by an assistant.

If reading all that made your Q4 plan feel like three projects instead of one, that is a fair reaction. This is exactly why I built the turnkey done-for-you store build, where my team handles supplier onboarding, feed setup, product page structure, and the ad account so you are not learning fulfillment routing in October.

Best Buy just showed you which categories it will not chase. Pick one it cannot deliver next day. Grab the free high-ticket niches list →

How to Fix Your Lead-Time Copy Before Q4 Appliance Season

Six things worth doing in the next week, in order of how much they move revenue.

Put a real ship window on every product page. Not “ships soon.” An actual range, pulled from your supplier’s current lead time, with an in-stock badge where it applies. If you are running Shopify, put it above the add-to-cart button, not in a collapsed tab at the bottom.
Sync supplier stock instead of guessing. Manual inventory spreadsheets are how you promise four weeks on something that is backordered until November. A feed tool like Stock Sync pulls supplier availability on a schedule so your lead times track reality, and my order fulfillment guide walks through the full workflow.
Email your top five suppliers about their refund. They are the importer of record, so they got the check. Ask two questions: are you passing any of it into dealer cost, and are you resetting MAP for Q4. If your domestic supplier list is thin, that is the other thing to fix this month.
Answer the delivery question before it kills the sale. Proactive shipment updates through a tool like AfterShip cut “where is my order” tickets, and a pre-sale chat widget such as Tidio catches the lead-time objection while the shopper is still on the page.
Put a phone number on the page and answer it. Best Buy cannot quote a 14-foot island configuration over the phone in four minutes. You can. A business line through Grasshopper takes an afternoon to set up, and if you want help mapping the whole quote-to-close process, book a discovery call.
Check what people are actually searching. Pull “next day delivery” and “in stock” modifiers for your category in SEMrush. If volume on those is climbing, your competitors are already answering it and you are not.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this mean appliances are a dead high-ticket category?
No. It means the mid-price, in-stock, shippable end of appliances is getting harder. Premium, oversized, and spec-configured units are untouched, and validating the niche properly is how you tell the difference before you commit.

Can I get a tariff refund on products I sell?
Only if you were the importer of record. If your US supplier imported the goods, the refund goes to them, not to you. The right move is to ask what they plan to do with it.

Should I try to offer next-day delivery too?
Not on freight items. You would need regional stocking and a carrier contract you cannot get at your volume. Compete on configuration help, install coordination, and phone response time instead.

How worried should I be about ChatGPT commerce integrations?
Watchful, not panicked. Assistants pull from structured product data, so clean specs, accurate availability, and a well-formed feed are the defense. My notes on AI Max landing in Shopping campaigns cover the ad-side version of this.

What is the fastest thing I can fix today?
Ship windows on your top 20 revenue SKUs. It takes an afternoon, it costs nothing, and it is the single most common reason a high-ticket shopper bounces.

I am brand new. Where do I even start?
Get the business entity right first, then pick the niche. My guide to business formation for high-ticket dropshipping covers the LLC, EIN, and reseller permit sequence in order.

How do I know if my margins can survive a price war?
You need clean books before you can answer that. Bookkeeping built for ecommerce, like Finaloop, will show you true landed margin by SKU instead of a blended number that hides the losers.

Do I need to hire before Q4?
If you are answering pre-sale calls yourself and it is slowing down supplier follow-up, yes. A trained VA hired through OnlineJobs.ph handles order status and lead-time checks for a fraction of a US hire, and pairing that with a real email flow through Omnisend covers the follow-up you are currently dropping.

Want 1-on-1 coaching to launch your high-ticket store? Get the coaching details →

Best Buy spending margin to win a delivery race is not a threat to your store unless you are selling the same shippable, in-stock, mid-price units it just claimed. Go where the freight is hard and the configuration matters. Subscribe to the YouTube channel for daily breakdowns. More breaking news later today.

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Trevor Fenner

Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.