1st Tuesday Recap: Corie Barry

Best Buy CEO Corie Barry had a wide-ranging conversation with Minnesota Public Radio’s Chris Farrell during the opening 1st Tuesday of 2025.

Barry first tackled recent headlines, sharing how potential tariffs would impact the company, which sources goods from both China and Mexico. She explained how tariffs are one tool to help diversify the supply chain, but change takes time.

“We’ve definitely seen our vendor partners moving and changing the way they produce, but when tariffs are put into place this fast, you literally can’t react overnight,” said Barry. “We’ll work with vendor partners, but at the end of the day, these become costs that get passed on to the American consumer because they flow through the entire supply chain and become part of the baseline cost. Our goal is to always be there to help educate the administration and talk about what we see as knock-on effects of this. Our teams do amazing work in partnership with our vendors to make sure as little of that disrupts the consumer as possible.”

Central to Best Buy’s focus is adapting to changing consumer habits. Among the company’s strategies include taking a market-based approach to their retail locations. For example, some stores cater more to in-store pick-up, while others offer more of an immersive experience. In the digital space, Barry discussed how Best Buy is integrating artificial intelligence into the customer experience, such as creating personalized home pages on Best Buy’s app based on the user’s history.

“AI will continue to get better and have better use cases over time,” said Barry. “You don’t need to have it change the world today, you need it to slowly innovate and change the way we do things and that’s where our [employees] absolutely shine with their ability to bring this to life for you as a person depending on what matters to you.”

As the session concluded, Barry gave insights into her personal career journey. She described how writing down takeaways from good days and bad days at the office helped her determine what drove her professionally.

“Over time those lists for me have turned into what really feeds my soul as it relates to work,” said Barry. “That for me isn’t a career question per se, it’s really thinking about: Is the work that I’m doing filling my soul? And if it’s not, what might be the next work that might fill my soul?”  

1st Tuesday returns on April with Tim Cofer, ‘92 MBA, the CEO of Keurig Dr Pepper. For more details, visit the registration information.