Raphael Stevens

Best Buy launched its third-party marketplace on Tuesday, which adds more brands and items to its website and app.
It joins a growing trend of retailers who are using third-party sellers as a way to attract sales, drive higher profits and draw advertising dollars.
The consumer electronics retailer’s business could use a boost as it contends with higher tariffs, sluggish housing turnover and consumers’ selective spending.

The exterior of a Best Buy store is seen on May 29, 2025 in Chicago, Illinois.
Scott Olson | Getty Images

Best Buy is launching a third-party marketplace, as it tries to bulk up the variety of merchandise it offers and reverse slower sales.
Starting on Tuesday, shoppers who go to Best Buy’s website and app will see products and brands that weren’t available there before, including more tech-related accessories like custom video game controllers and some non-tech items including seasonal decor and sports collectibles.

The company’s online marketplace riffs off those of other retailers, such as Amazon and Walmart, by relying on third-party sellers to stock, sell and ship inventory and taking a cut of their sales in the form of a commission.
“Everything we do is really centered around the customer and their technology needs, and we do see customers actually doing a lot of consumer electronics transactions through marketplaces,” Chief Customer, Product and Fulfillment Officer Jason Bonfig said. “And as a result of that, we need to make adjustments to be where the customer’s at.”
He said Best Buy noticed gaps in its assortment that the new platform will help it fill. For instance, he said the company didn’t carry batteries for some older cameras or cases for older smartphones. And it didn’t offer some items that complement Best Buy purchases, such as furniture that goes around a big-screen TV or cookware to use with a new kitchen appliance.
Along with adding those items, the marketplace makes it possible for smaller vendors with innovative products to sell on Best Buy’s website when they’re not yet big enough to make or distribute the volume needed for its stores, he added.
Best Buy’s marketplace launches at a time when its business could use a boost. Its annual sales have declined over the past three years as the company contends with a sluggish housing market, selective consumer spending and a decline in device replacements after a spike in tech purchases during the Covid pandemic.

The company cut its sales outlook in May and said it expects full-year revenue to range from $41.1 billion to $41.9 billion. That would be similar to Best Buy’s annual revenue of $41.5 billion in the most recent fiscal year, but below the numbers it posted in the years leading up to and during the pandemic.
Best Buy will share its most recent earnings results and sales forecast on Aug. 28.

Tariffs have complicated the backdrop for Best Buy, too, since the higher duties have added costs for consumer electronics vendors and distracted them from other priorities like research and development that leads to new and innovative products, said Jonathan Matuszewski, a retail analyst for Jefferies. He said Best Buy tends to win sales instead of big-box or online competitors when there’s a leap forward in technology.
With the platform’s launch, Best Buy joins other retailers that have jumped on the trend of launching or expanding third-party marketplaces. Lowe’s and Nordstrom started marketplaces last year. Ulta Beauty plans to launch its own later this year. And Target said it will expand its existing marketplace, Target Plus.
On Best Buy’s earnings call in May, CEO Corie Barry described the third-party marketplace as one of the company’s strategic priorities for the year. She said that new profit stream “is even more important in this environment” and will provide greater flexibility with the range of items and price points.
Plus, she said the marketplace supports the company’s growing advertising business. Sellers can buy ads for their products, including by paying for better placement in search results.
Marketplaces and the advertising opportunities that come with them tend drive higher profits for retailers, said Justin MacFarlane, a managing director for the global retail group of AlixPartners. Sellers buy, stock and ship products instead of the retailer, and take on both the expense of buying inventory and the risk that they may have to mark down unwanted items, he said.
Yet the business model comes with risks, too, he said. For instance, sellers may not have the same standards as a retailer and it could anger a retailer’s customers if they send products in torn boxes, with missing pieces or days later than expected. And he said retailers can flood their websites with so many different categories, brands and products that they overwhelm customers with choices that seem irrelevant to their company’s identity.
“You get addicted to the growth and more is more until it’s not,” he said.
At launch, Best Buy’s marketplace will have about 500 sellers, Bonfig said. He said the company vetted applicants and whittled them down to the ones who can provide a high-quality customer experience. The sellers must match Best Buy’s return policy, he added.
Customers can return purchases either directly to the seller or to Best Buy stores, he said. More

A California bill ensures homeowners receive at least some of the interest on insurance payouts held in escrow accounts after catastrophic losses.
The bill — which would apply to both existing insurance payouts that are still being held in escrow accounts and to any new escrow accounts — heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk for his signature.
California Assemblymember John Harabedian said he authored the legislation after hearing from his constituents about their struggles following the historic fires that ripped through Los Angeles in January.

An aerial view of properties cleared of wildfire debris which burned in the Eaton Fire on July 03, 2025 in Altadena, California.
Mario Tama | Getty Images News | Getty Images

The California state legislature passed a bill Monday that ensures homeowners, not lenders, receive at least some of the interest on insurance payouts for homes destroyed or damaged by natural disasters.
The legislation comes after thousands of homeowners lost their residences in January’s historic wildfires in Southern California. Following such a loss, insurers send checks typically made out jointly to both the homeowner and the mortgage lender or servicer. The lender will then deposit the funds into an escrow account, where it earns interest that the lender could keep.

California Assemblymember John Harabedian, D-Pasadena, the author of the bill, said he is fighting to change that after hearing from his constituents about their struggles getting insurance payouts released from their lenders.
“If the homeowners are not given their money right away, the interest on that money, which the banks and the mortgage lenders are holding onto and earning [interest on], should be paid to the homeowner, not the banks,” Harabedian told CNBC. “The more we looked into this, the more we realized that this was a huge problem across the board.”
The bill will now head to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s desk to be signed into law.
After a disaster, insurance settlement checks can often be held in an escrow account by the mortgage servicing company until rebuilding is complete, which can take months or even years. During this time, the funds can accrue significant interest that the servicing company could keep.  
Now, the homeowner will be guaranteed at least 2% interest on those funds.

The bill will apply to both existing insurance payouts that are still being held in escrow accounts and to any new escrow accounts that are opened following a catastrophic event. For any funds already in an escrow account, interest at 2% simple per annum will begin accruing on the bill’s effective date.
Newsom, who sponsored the state legislation, said homeowners rebuilding after a disaster need all the support they can get.
“This is a commonsense solution that ensures that [homeowners] receive every resource available to help them recover and rebuild,” Newsom said in a statement in February when the bill was first introduced.
California law had already required lenders to pay homeowners interest on escrowed funds for property taxes and insurance, but it didn’t explicitly include insurance payments. The bill aims to close that loophole.
“It’s sad that we have to introduce a bill to make the banks and the mortgage lenders do the right thing, but this is about homeowners getting all the financial help that they can throughout this difficult period,” Harabedian said. More

Retailers are trying to manage cost increases from President Donald Trump’s tariffs.
A practice known as retail inventory method accounting could affect how higher costs show up in companies’ profit margins, as retailers including Walmart, Target and Home Depot prepare to post earnings.
CNBC looked at how the accounting method could show higher short-term profitability under various tariff scenarios.

As more tariffs take effect on goods imported into the U.S., a specific accounting method could have major implications for how American retailers calculate the impact.
A tariff adds to the cost of an imported item when it’s received and paid for when it crosses a border. While there’s debate over who pays that tariff — the manufacturer, the retailer, the consumer or some combination — the hit will likely show up in retailers’ bottom lines.

But a specific accounting practice, called retail inventory method accounting, or RIM, can make profitability appear stronger than it is in the short term.
“Retail inventory method accounting (RIM) is less responsive to initial product cost changes compared to cost accounting, and can initially overstate profitability,” said Ali Furman, PwC U.S. consumer markets industry leader. “This would normalize once tariffs stabilize, depending on how much of the cost retailers absorb.” 
Because RIM uses an average cost-to-retail price ratio across a broad group of items, rather than the actual cost of every item, like in cost accounting, RIM does not entirely capture the immediate impact of rising costs.   

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The retail method of accounting.
CNBC US source

Nearly a quarter of U.S. retailers use the retail inventory method of accounting, according to PwC. Walmart, Target and Home Depot are among them. All three retailers report quarterly earnings this week, and their results may not fully show how tariffs have cut into their profitability so far.
Take Walmart, the largest U.S. retailer, which will post fiscal second-quarter earnings Thursday.

TD Cowen analyst Oliver Chen estimated about half of Walmart’s quarter will include the impact of levies, as the company brought in inventory at different cost levels before and after new tariff rates took effect. That could temporarily distort gross margin profitability, Chen said.
Walmart’s accounting has in part informed its strategy in recent months as it navigates President Donald Trump’s unpredictable tariff policy.
A week after Trump’s April 2 announcement of so-called “reciprocal tariffs” on a wide swath of trade partners, Walmart withdrew its guidance for operating income in its first fiscal quarter. However, the company maintained its annual forecast, citing in part the influence of RIM accounting.

Walmart employee Losing Spicer helps transport bikes on Friday, Dec. 8, 2023, in Conroe.
Jason Fochtman | Houston Chronicle | Hearst Newspapers | Getty Images

Then when it reported its fiscal first-quarter earnings in May, Walmart said it would mitigate higher costs as much as possible, but would likely have to increase some prices at the current tariff rates. 
In response, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Walmart should “just eat” the tariffs.
Doing so could actually benefit a retailer’s bottom line, at least initially, according to Furman.
“The more costs retailers absorb in retail accounting, the greater the risk of overstating profitability during periods of increasing costs, such as tariff increases,” she said.
Walmart management briefed Trump this spring about the impact its accounting method may have on results in a high-tariff environment, according to a person familiar with the discussion, who asked to remain unnamed while speaking about private conversations.
Still, James Bowie, managing director in EY’s technical accounting advisory group, warned “all of the inventory costing methodologies will be affected in some ways.”

An employee folds towel at a Manhattan retail store on July 15, 2025 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images

It typically takes a large, non-fast fashion retailer using RIM roughly two to four quarters for cost volatility to settle and profitability to get closer to its true level, according to PwC. The method could make profitability look higher initially, then lower in a subsequent quarter, before it has time to stabilize.
“It’s kind of like you’ve got a speed boat on the price,” he said. “I can turn pretty quickly, but I’ve got a cruise liner that is carrying all my average of my inventory. It takes a little longer for it to turn and so even though they might ultimately be able to go the same speed, it takes a little bit of time for that one turn to take place.”
While RIM is more likely to lead to a temporary overstating of profitability, it can also wind up understanding profits if tariffs are negotiated lower.
Bowie said if a retailer responds to lower tariff rates by cutting retail prices, under RIM accounting, “it looks like my margin has eroded, but it’s only because I now am waiting for the cost relationship to catch back up, so [it] might look like there’s margin compression even in a period of decreasing tariffs.”
Furman added that PwC is seeing “a clear disconnect” for companies that use RIM accounting.
“Companies might be doing all the right things: navigating sourcing challenges, managing suppliers, and even mitigating tariffs,” she said. “But, those efforts often aren’t reflected in the financials. That misalignment between operational execution and reporting for those using RIM is exacerbating the challenges retailers face.”  

Why use RIM?

The retail inventory method of accounting is an older method that was most useful for retailers when they had many items from a range of categories without an easy, or technological, way to track inventory. 
“Inventory accounting methods existed before this thing called Excel,” said Bowie. “[A retailer] had an abacus and a dream trying to figure out what you’re going to do.”
Over time, technology made it easy to use actual costs rather than averages, so cost accounting became more common.

People shop at Macy’s department store in Manhattan in New York City, U.S., August 11, 2025.
Eduardo Munoz | Reuters

As retailers grow and accounting methods become ingrained, it’s difficult, though not impossible, to switch tactics. Macy’s and Nordstrom recently made the change to cost accounting.
PwC said it takes an average of two to three years to make the transition from one accounting method to another and can require millions of dollars and a restatement of previous years’ financials to provide apples-to-apples comparisons. Still, the accounting firm said about half of retailers that use RIM have considered switching.

A case study

CNBC worked with PwC’s Furman and Suni Shamapande, the firm’s U.S. retail customer experience and operations leader, to develop a simplified example demonstrating the difference between RIM and weighted average cost accounting in how they affect gross profit margins.
The example demonstrates how RIM accounting can “overstate” true profitability at a moment in time when costs increase quickly.

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Listed gross profit margin can change based on accounting methods in various tariff scenarios.
CNBC US source

For the purposes of this example, PwC and CNBC used weighted average cost accounting, which takes a SKU-level weight average and blends all costs together, regardless of purchase date. A SKU is a stock-keeping unit, which retailers use to track inventory of specific items.
Base case: No tariffs
The base case, which does not include tariffs, uses three different T-shirts types from three different countries. Each type of T-shirt, or individual SKU, has a different cost and is sold to consumers at a different retail price. The retailer bought each type of T-shirt in different quantities, as did consumers.
Here’s how the math differs to start.
The gross profit margin for the items calculated using weighted average cost accounting is 46%. Using RIM, it’s 53%.

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The retail accounting model with no tariffs.
CNBC US source

Tariff case 1: Retailer’s costs increase, all else remains the same
If the retailer’s cost for each T-shirt goes up as a result of tariffs, but everything else — units bought, units sold and retail price — remains the same, gross margin falls if calculated using cost accounting and RIM. But it would still be higher under RIM than if the company used cost accounting.
Here’s the math for our simplified example:

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The retail accounting method if the retailer’s costs increase but prices and demand stay the same.
CNBC US source

Tariff case 2: Retailer raises prices to offset higher costs
If the retailer passes on the full dollar value of the tariff cost to the customer, and units bought and sold stay the same, gross margin improves under both accounting methods. 
In our example, it goes to 36% in cost accounting and 47% with RIM.

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The retail accounting model if costs increase, the retailer raises prices and units sold stay the same.
CNBC US source

Both gross margin percentages are lower than the base case, which assumes no tariffs, but the percentage change is smaller under RIM than under cost accounting.
Tariff case 3: Retailer raises prices and units bought and sold both fall
Here’s where it gets interesting, and likely more realistic, to reflect supply and demand choices a retailer and consumer would likely make as costs rise.
If the retailer passes on the full dollar value of tariffs to the customer and also sells fewer items to consumers at the higher retail price, RIM makes profit margins look temporarily rosier.
Gross margin in our example falls to 27% under cost accounting, but holds steady under RIM at 47% even though units sold have changed.
Here’s where you see how the ratio of cost of goods sold to selling price hasn’t had time to adjust. 

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The retail accounting method if a retailer raises prices and the units bought and sold both fall.
CNBC US source

— CNBC’s Jodi Gralnick contributed to this report. More

MSNBC will change its name later this year to MS Now (My Source News Opinion World) and drop the peacock image from its branding.
These are the first significant public-facing changes in Versant’s upcoming separation from Comcast’s NBCUniversal.
MSNBC has been undergoing aggressive hiring for about 100 new positions to stand up its own newsroom independent from NBC News.

The brand logo for My Source News Opinion World
Courtesy of Versant

MSNBC will change its name later this year and drop the storied peacock image from its branding — the first real public-facing changes in Versant’s upcoming separation from Comcast’s NBCUniversal.
The political news network will be renamed My Source News Opinion World, or MS Now, Versant Chief Executive Officer Mark Lazarus wrote in an internal memo to employees that was seen by CNBC.

In January, Lazarus told a group of MSNBC staffers that the network wouldn’t change its name. But during the past few months of transition planning, NBCUniversal leaders decided MSNBC should take on a new name “to accelerate the distinction between the MSNBC and NBC News organizations,” Lazarus wrote in the memo Monday.
MSNBC president Rebecca Kutler added in her own note to employees that the news group’s focus won’t change.
“While our name will be changing, who we are and what we do will not. Our commitment to our work and our audiences will not waiver from what the brand promise has been for three decades,” she wrote.
MSNBC has been undergoing aggressive hiring for about 100 new positions to stand up its own newsroom independent from NBC News. The network has already hired about 40 journalists from CNN, Bloomberg, Politico and other news organizations to establish its first-ever Washington, D.C., bureau.
“During this time of transition, NBCUniversal decided that our brand requires a new, separate identity,” Kutler wrote. “This decision now allows us to set our own course and assert our independence as we continue to build our own modern newsgathering operation.”

While MSNBC and NBC News will have duplications in coverage, such as covering politics, CNBC’s news organization is already separate enough from NBC News that executives decided it didn’t need a name change, according to people familiar with the matter. Also, technically, the “NBC” in “CNBC” never stemmed from National Broadcasting Company. Rather, CNBC stands for “Consumer News and Business Channel.”
Still, CNBC will likewise be getting a new logo without the famed NBCUniversal peacock. This will be true for all of Versant’s brands that have a peacock in the logo. Sports content on the USA network and Golf Channel will be branded together under USA Sports. Digital companies GolfNow and SportsEngine will also change their logos.
The MSNBC name change and the new logos will all be introduced before the end of the year, when Versant plans to spin out as a publicly traded company.
MSNBC will soon kick off a national marketing campaign to accompany the launch of the new name, “unlike anything we have done in recent memory,” Kutler noted in her memo Monday.
MSNBC is the second-most watched cable news network, averaging 1.2 million primetime viewers year-to-date. The network has 28 on-air anchors, 21 correspondents and reporters, and provides from than 120 hours of live programming each week.
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC under the proposed spinoff. More