Corie Barry

While Corie Barry positioned Best Buy well to ride the pandemic-fueled jump in electronics spending, the CEO is struggling to arrest the sharp drop in sales now that consumers are done building themselves home offices and theaters. Last year, revenue fell 10.5% to $46.3 billion, as consumers shifted spending to things like travel and held back on big-ticket items like appliances and new PCs. Barry has been praised for how Best Buy has managed the things it can control—above all costs—but the downturn has put into painful relief how reliant Best Buy remains on traditional consumer electronics and how early it still is in its strategy to win the health tech market. And while Barry says a return to growth in electronics is possible next year, Best Buy is trying out new avenues of revenue, such as new small-size stores selling refurbished electronics to pull in more budget-oriented shoppers.