Comments on: Five Apple Retail Flops

By: What Makes an Apple Store So Great

What Makes an Apple Store So Great — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 14:03:02 +0000

[...] [...]

By: What Makes an Apple Store So Great | iPhone, iPad Weblog

What Makes an Apple Store So Great | iPhone, iPad Weblog — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 16:25:50 +0000

[...] I’ve written before about some of the missteps that Apple has taken, but even with its faults, the company never stops and keeps striving to make [...]

By: JadedConsumer

JadedConsumer — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:07:38 +0000

The kind of high-end storefront Apple has been rolling out in New York, Beijing, and the like begs the question how commodity vendors like Dell (and by extension, Microsoft, which requires bargain-basement commodity boxes produced at thin margins by efficient OEMs in order to make Microsoft's pre-installed products seem inexpensive) hope to make money copying Apple's retail behavior. High-rent retail locations don't make sense for commodity products, and taking on support overhead works against MSFT's historical margins strategy (to push support to OEMs to retain maximum profit). Given that MSFT's new OS isn't working against Apple's apparent long-term trend toward higher penetration, and Apple's component purchasing power places it in a position from which competitors have a hard time profitably chasing Apple's various products, it seems that a "me-too" retail strategy will either be vastly overpriced for its delivered profit or will be a transparent effort to dress up a trailer park like a community of established brownstones. I predict both Dell and Microsoft will find retail an inefficient way to reclaim high-margin share from Apple. I suspect Apple will continue to hold and expand high-margin business despite effort to compete on price.

By: John

John — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 14:57:34 +0000

I loathe the EasyPay system, and the cashwrap-free store experience. It is cumbersome and slow for small purchases, and has pretty much discouraged me from casual Apple Store visits. It removes the focus from the store, and makes the entire experience very un-Apple like. Every EasyPay transaction I’ve conducted has been slow, socially awkward, and often fraught with error. (Card reader doesn’t work, machine can’t connect to the printer, etc.)

In addition, the lack of a “front” to the store makes the entire store feel cluttered. Walking into the Biltmore (Phoenix) store feels like running a gauntlet of multi-colored shirts. (That there are often more Apple employees than customers milling around doesn’t help.)

By: Tom Ross

Tom Ross — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:36:49 +0000

I guess it is American overselling, a bit like those shows on TV that say they can make you an Idol or a Top Model.

By: Tom Ross

Tom Ross — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 18:26:34 +0000

The Gateway Country Stores were not a “quick entry and exit”. Gateway opened their first stores in 1996 and decided to close them 8 years later, in 2004, after they had bought eMachines and started to focus on retail chains like BestBuy. There used to be almost 200 stores around the US, mostly in rural areas.

By: nebben

nebben — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 11:07:32 +0000

I don’t see this list as flops by Apple’s retail unit, but as evolutions in that unit. You can take any retail chain and devise some things they no longer do, or that don’t work 100% every time. This doesn’t make them flops. It just means things change, for a number of reasons.

By: Top Posts « WordPress.com

Top Posts « WordPress.com — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 00:33:26 +0000

[...] Five Apple Retail Flops As Microsoft (s msft) proudly ventures into the retail world that has already seen quick entrances and exits by other [...] [...]

By: Pugsly

Pugsly — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:10:16 +0000

Alltough I love the personal training sessions. They need a more dedicated area set aside for that. At the woodfield and old orchard stores no matter what the accessory I need or want to look at is right behind were they are training a customer. Bad design to use product display tables as classroom desks

By: Will Robertson

Will Robertson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 15:31:55 +0000

Very interesting, thanks for the info!