Good morning, Broadsheet readers! A memoir and an inspirational book are on the way from Serena Willams, Betches gets acquired, and Best Buy CEO Corie Barry argues that technology is a “need,” not another form of discretionary spending.
– Consumer behavior. Best Buy CEO Corie Barry doesn’t think her company should be lumped in with discretionary consumer spending. Technology isn’t a nice thing to have, but a human right, she argued at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit last week.
I interviewed Barry, a two-decade veteran of the $46 billion-in-revenue electronics retailer, onstage in Laguna Niguel, Calif. In a conversation that covered a “contradictory” macroeconomic environment and her path from CFO to CEO, Barry made the pitch for Best Buy as more than a place to check out new gadgets.
“We live in a really misunderstood industry. There’s this idea that it’s discretionary—but who here will go today without using some kind of electronics?” she asked. “This is a need.”
The Consumer Technology Association, the organization behind the electronics trade show CES, added technology as an eighth pillar of human security at a September event in partnership with the UN Trust Fund for Human Security, Barry pointed out.
“It’s so essential to being connected to the world,” she said.
Stuart Isett/Fortune
Best Buy sees itself as part of that essential need, as evidenced by such business decisions as its push into health care. The company started selling blood glucose monitoring systems this month, its first time selling a prescription device. “The future of health care will be enabled by technology,” Barry said, explaining why the retailer has expanded into this category.
Others, however, are less convinced that the overall Best Buy business has moved beyond discretionary spending. Wall Street is made up of “the most pragmatic thinkers by nature,” she argued—those likely to poke holes in a company’s lofty ambitions.
Analysts and investors may be more focused on current consumer behavior than the role of technology in society. Shoppers right now are spending conservatively after moving up purchases for home theaters and offices in the early days of the pandemic. “Bigger ticket items in electronics are right now not where people are as interested,” Barry said.
Long-term, that doesn’t dissuade Barry from her vision for Best Buy. “Yes, right now people are pulling back,” she said. “But the future will only be more enabled by technology. And we’re the last left standing.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
– Playing doubles. Newly-retired Serena Williams is planning to publish two books. The first is a memoir about her record-breaking career and personal life. The second is described as an “inspirational” self-help book that incorporates Williams’s experience in venture capital, philanthropy, advocacy, and as “someone who has long sought to lift a diverse and emergent generation of young women whose aspirations are not confined to the court,” according to Random House Publishing Group. Neither book has a release date. Fortune
– Donation divide. Women accounted for almost half of donors in state elections from 2019 to 2022, yet they contributed only a third of the total money donated to candidates, according to a new Center for American Women and Politics report. With politicians more likely to appease their donors and women more likely to support female candidates financially, the disparity can sway how many female politicians gain office and the types of bills that get passed. The 19th
– Heads or Wells. Janet Yellen selected the final group of influential American women who will have their faces serialized on a new set of quarters for public circulation, including journalist and NAACP founder Ida B. Wells, Girl Scouts founder Juliette Gordon Low, athlete Althea Gibson, disabilities activist Stacey Park Milbern, and astronomer Vera Rubin. The quarters are set to be minted for 2025. The Hill
– Moms in Gaza. Roughly 50,000 women in war-stricken Gaza are pregnant, and the United Nations Population Fund projects that 10% of them will give birth in the next month. With a lack of food, water, and safe escape routes from the area, the UN and others are warning that a humanitarian catastrophe could be on the horizon. CNN
– Cheerio, Betches. Betches Media, the U.S. millennial women’s digital media brand, has been acquired by LBG Media, the British publisher behind sites like LADbible. LBG is paying $24 million, with the potential to pay an additional $30 million if the brand reaches certain financial targets. MarketWatch
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: Tenable appointed Meg O’ Leary as chief marketing officer. Zendesk named Caroline Jessen as chief people and diversity officer.
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PARTING WORDS
“I’m no longer simply advocating for change; I am committed to reimagining the entire industry.”
—Jeanell English, the former impact and inclusion chief at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, who left the role after suffering frequent micro-aggressions and losing her direct line to the CEO
