Best Buy is opening a digital-first, small-format store on Tuesday in Monroe, North Carolina, that takes a very different approach than most of its “big box” retail locations. The 5,000-square-foot location is only about 15 percent as big as the typical 35- to 40,000-square-foot Best Buy location and is even smaller than many smaller Apple Stores, which are typically between 6,000 to 8,500 square feet.
Bloomberg reported last year that Best Buy was testing downsized locations of about…