I was in a Best Buy recently and noticed the Magnolia Home Theater and Audio section looked closed with everything boxed up. I was told Best Buy was closing Magnolia and folding them into the regular Best Buy store. Other Best Buy stores I visited still had the Magnolia sections but they were not manned. At the ones that are open, they are selling some of their demo equipment off as "Open Box". You can get things for around 50% off. I picked up a Pro-Ject 6 Perspex SB for $1,400 with a Sumiko cartridge.
My understanding is the same brands will be sold, just not under a different company name, Magnolia. Apparently Best Buy bought Magnolia and is looking to cut cost by merging the two into just Best Buy...at least that is what one of the Magnolia employees told me...
They are still pretty proud of that gear at the moment. They are only selling off certain demo items. But I imagine yes, eventually they will sell other items off but the MC stuff usually holds it's resale value pretty high. But things like Rotel gear and turntables and some high end amps are probably 30 to 40% off at one of my local stores. I paid $1,400 for the Pro-Ject 6 Perspex SB with a new Sumiko Amethyst cartridge.
For those who don't know: Magnolia was a Seattle based Mi -fi - entry level high end store through at least the 90's. Best Buy bought them & moved them into the Best Buy Stores.
One less reason to visit my local Best Buy store. Not many reason left, if any. Although the Magnolia at its location never appeared to have any staff the last three or four years, and seemed focused on TVs… most of the HT integrateds/receivers and speakers weren’t even hooked up.
They’re still doing ‘ok’ financially. I hope they stick around if only because they’re one of a select handful of retailers who can at some level give competition to Amazon.
I understand your sentiment. There are aren't many chain audio/video stores left. I still despise them for undercutting CD prices and running the record stores out of business.
Yeah, BestBuy's loss leader pricing of CDs in the early '90s crushed some small stores that depended on big out-of-the-box sales of new hit releases to make their nut. (Same thing Amazon did to bookstores a decade later). But Tower's downfall was mostly of their own making.
Thanks for the history...was wondering. For a mid to entry hi-fi store, they were selling some pretty high end product. Most stores had McIntosh and Mark Levinson gear that seemed a little more than entry...
I never saw Levisnson at Magnolia, but I rarely went into the BB/Mag stores. I think the highest end product I ever saw at Magnolia were Martin Logan speakers & Oppo Blu-rays. And at least in Seattle, both the original stand alones & the BB in stores were clueless as far as how to do a quality demo.
When the Oppo 103 was being phased out in favor of the 203, I purchased a BB/Magnolia store’s two demo units for the price of one. Good times.
I got my 95 as a demo at BB/Magnolia for $800. I remember bringing a hybrid Stones Hot Rocks SACD to demo it. Didn't sound so good at first. The young salesman didn't know you have to select the SACD layer in the set up menu for hybrids. The kid's mouth dropped open after I told him to do that & we played it!
I bought my Vienna Acoustic surround speaker system from them at half off even though I couldn’t afford it. I still have them!
My other purchase there were a pair of Dahlquist 20's that sounded great with Vinyl & AWFUL with digital.
I only tried going to Magnolia a couple of times when I was just getting in to the audiophile thing. I stopped bothering with them pretty quickly as the few I visited usually weren't staffed and when I could actually find an associate they didn't seem to know much of anything. Luckily, I was able to find a great independently owned store about 45 minutes away.
I'm sure that contributed to their current situation. Still, they had some nice audiophile items in their demo rooms. Some of the stores are selling their barely used demo equipment. Like I said, I picked up a very lightly used Pro-Ject 6 Perspex SB that retailed for $2,799 for $1,400. It even came with a new Sumiko Amethyst MM cartridge ($599 retail). The only issue is the tiny magnet in the tone arm that helps hold it to the tone arm stand fell out. Should be a pretty easy fix. They offered me a Rotel CD player that was originally $899 for $447. I'm waiting on some of the Macintosh equipment to go on sale...