The grand opening of the El Paseo Village (Palm Desert, Calif.) store this Saturday will feature a special offer: Apple is offering to sell 250 One to One memberships to anyone. Usually, the personal set-up and training service is sold for $99 only with the purchase of a Mac computer. The special offer was announced in a company press release to local press. The store will be the state’s 48th, and the first in the Coachella Valley, about two hours east of Los Angeles and home to several upscale resorts.
On some days, over 1 million people visit Apple’s retail stores in 10 countries, Steve Jobs told the audience at the today’s annual iTunes music update event in San Francisco. That compares with just 30,000 attendees to the week-long MacWorld conferences where Apple used to exhibit, Jobs added for comparison. The company has previously cited the large number of store visitors as a key reason why it stopped attending the annual MacWorld conference in 2009. Significantly, Jobs began today’s 90-minute event with an update on the retail initiative, showing photos of the three newest stores in Paris, Shanghai and London, and giving some statistics on the operation. He said the new Opéra (Paris) store was in a “beautiful old building” that took 18 months to restore. “Apple users in Paris are loving it,” Jobs said as he showed interior photos. When a photo of the Pudong (Shanghai) store appeared, the audience of Apple employees and invited guests broke into applause. “It’s a landmark building in glass engineering,” Jobs explained, pointing out the 40-foot tall glass cylinder entrance. The Covent Garden (London) store also took a lot of restoration, Jobs said, and proves that, “the old and new work beautifully together.” There are now over 300 stores in 10 countries, Jobs said, and the first store in Spain will open soon, making 11 countries. “We’ve come a long ways,” he remarked. He finished his retail review with two statistics: the stores host 80,000 One to One training sessions each week, and of the store’s computer buyers, over half are buying their first Mac. read more…
Faced with sky-high duties on imports of glass from outside China, Apple skeptically turned to domestic suppliers to manufacture the Pudong (Shanghai) retail store’s impressive glass cylinder and spiral glass staircase. Two men involved in the engineering and manufacture of the glass say it took a year of testing, failures and—finally—advances in technology to manufacture the 62 pieces that finally met Apple’s demands for structural and visual perfection. As first reported in The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the glass had to meet rigid stress and load-bearing requirements, and was needed in enormous sizes: over 41 feet long and almost 8-1/2 feet wide. During an architectural conference in Shanghai earlier this month, glass engineer James O’Callaghan described how Apple worked with a China-based firm to produce the glass pieces previously provided only by Seele GbmH & Co. in Germany. Faced with import duties up to 30 percent, and probably encouraged by politics to support Chinese businesses, Apple selected Beijing-based North Glass Safety Glass Co. to produce the complex, six-layer pieces for Shanghai’s first Apple store. North Glass had produced some of the glass panels for the Sanlitun (Beijing) store and another in New York City as practice. But even so, North Glass general manager Gao Qi said at the conference, “(Apple) doubted our ability.” read more…
For the second time since the George Street (Sydney) store opened in June 2008, specially-trained work crews have replaced a huge front window glass panel that exhibited cracks. Insiders say the damage appeared several weeks ago and, like the previous incident last October, appears to have been caused by a propelled hard object. Workers blocked off one lane of George Street in front of the store late Sunday night, and then brought in a heavy-duty crane with custom-made suction gear to replace the 42-foot x 10-foot panel. The local firm Kell & Rigby installed the original glass made by Germany-based Seele GmbH & Co., and workers from both companies replaced the first damaged panel. That project took two nights to complete after the lifting equipment failed to operate properly to remove the 3,200-pound panel. There have been previous reports of accidental damage to glass staircase treads (Fifth Avenue), and one reported delamination of a stair side support panel (The Grove). However, there have been no reports of vandalism to the front windows of Apple stores beyond occasional burglar damage.
Construction is underway for the second Apple retail store in Shanghai (China), in an area popular with ex-patriates and locals, and a short walk from the Xintiandi car-free shopping and restaurant zone and a major subway station. The future store occupies a large, ground-floor space at the corner of Huaihai Middle Road and Huangpi Road, in a shopping mall that was previously low-key and run down. Over the past year the four-level mall has been renovated, attracting many upscale international retailers, including a two-level Cartier’s, Tiffany & Co., and the first Gap store next to Apple’s space. Twin 38-story towers provide office space and service apartments. Apple executives have said they intend to have 25 stores in China by the end of 2011. Ground-floor retail rents in Shanghai are averaging about $20 per square-foot monthly, real estate sources say. A 10,000 square-foot store could cost Apple $2.4 million a year in rent. This store could open by late 2010 or in early 2011.
map
As the future Lincoln Park (Chicago) store project nears completion, Apple has one more design surprise that won’t even be visible for the thousands of visitors who will come through the store. Besides the stainless steel, the glass and the $4 million transit station renovations, there will be a green garden on the roof of the building, completely invisible from the ground. Only three other stores in the chain have a green roof—Chicago’s other store on North Michigan Avenue (NMA), Boylston Street (Boston) and Uptown (Minneapolis). The NMA garden debuted with the store in 2004, three years after a city demonstration project put a garden on the roof of city hall. In 2005 Chicago funded $100,000 in annual grants to encourage more rooftop gardens. The grant program expired when the economy turned down in 2008. But now the city has over 200 green roofs covering over 7 million square-feet, more than any other city in the U.S. Meanwhile, the green roof concept has gained ground around the world as an eco-friendly way to handle roof rainwater run-off, provide building insulation and lower the temperature in what’s called the “urban heat island.” photos
Three Apple store employees traveling along a Pennsylvania turnpike on Tuesday afternoon were injured, and a fourth employee was killed when the driver fell asleep and their car left the road and struck a tree. Pennsylvania State Police say Robert Felberbaum, 20, fell asleep as his VW rounded a curve on I-76 south of Reading about 4 p.m. Troopers say all four occupants were wearing seatbelts, but that Kristin Green, 20, was seriously injured sitting in the front passenger seat. She was airlifted to Reading Hospital, where she died. Felberbaum was also seriously injured, along with passengers Tracey Cowit, 21, and Richard DiLorenzo, 21. Green’s family says Kristin had dropped out of New York University last year after two years of study, and was recently hired at the Walt Whitman Apple store in Huntington Station (NY). Interstate 76 was closed for 90 minutes while firefighters extracated the victims from the vehicle, and helicopters landed to airlifted them to a Reading hospital about 15 miles from the accident.
After four years of searching Spain for the perfect store locations, and encouraged by increased sales in the country during the last year, Apple will open its first Spain store at La Maquinista (Barcelona) shopping mall on September 4th at 10 a.m. A week later, the second store will open at the Xanadù shopping mall in Madrid on September 11th at 10 a.m. Apple’s Sr. VP Retail Ron Johnson told a local newspaper last week that the company’s retail team spent years looking at potential retail locations in Spain, apparently finalizing their choices earlier this year. During a conference call with financial analysts last month, Apple CFO Tim Cook noted that year-over-year Macintosh sales were up 59 percent in Spain, “where the economy has clearly been very difficult.” Insiders say early next year a street-level store will open in an historic building in city center Valencia. There are now Apple retail stores in 10 countries, with France added just last November.
Apple will open two more retail stores this Saturday, 3,900 miles apart and representing the southern coast of France and the northeastern United States. The CAP 3000 store in Nice (France) will open at 10 a.m., the fourth store in the country and the second on the Mediterranean. Just hours later, the Ross Park store will open in the northern suburbs of Pittsburgh (Penn.), the seventh store in the state.
A three-year search by Brooklyn (NY) officials to find retail tenants for empty space in a municipal building has now dovetailed with the borough president’s recent lobbying efforts to bring an Apple store to Brooklyn, resulting in an architectural rendering that suggests how the 1920s building could be modified specifically for the computer company. The building at 210 Joralemon Street at Court Street houses various city offices, but 44,000 square-feet on two levels at the corner could bring the city $20 million in a sale, a local business group determined. So in October 2007 city officials began exploring how to lease or sell the vacant space. To assist potential buyers, the city had an architectural rendering created that showed larger windows and brighter lights that would illuminate the interior retail space. Earlier this year borough president Marty Markowitz posted a too-cute YouTube video pitching the Joralemon Street location for an Apple retail store. Now, in the latest move, a second rendering has appeared, showing an even more radical renovation of the existing building—removal of nearly all the exterior walls over two floors, large two-story display windows, a spiral glass staircase inside, and an enormous back-lit Apple logo. Insiders say Apple’s retail team has been scouting Brooklyn for at least three years, but has not found a suitable location. Real estate broker Robert Greenstone says he has shown Apple execs several potential store locations in Brooklyn. The Racked Web site reports that Greenstone knows the location of the future Brooklyn Apple store, possibly in the Atlantic Yards area, about a mile southeast of the Joralemon Street building. However, Greenstone won’t reveal the location. renderings
In line with Apple’s promise to increase the square-footage of its retail stores, the Trafford Centre (UK) store closed August 10th, and operations have moved to a nearby temporary space while construction is underway to double its size. The 30-foot wide store opened in November 2005, in a narrow space that allows only a single row of display tables in the center, flanked by the usual wall-mounted display shelves. The store was 75 feet deep, the only dimension that kept it from officially being called a mini-store. Now the store has moved from space 146 on the upper level to a temporary store in space 126, formerly occupied by Bay Traders. Construction crews are working to knock down the wall between the original Apple store space and former Dolcis shoe store next door. By November the combined spaces will re-open as a 60-foot wide Apple store, in time for the holiday sales season. mall plan
The street performers, the gas lights, the brick walls and stone arches of the Covent Garden (London) Apple store recall its earlier days when horse-drawn carriages brought customers to the local markets and shops. It takes just a little imagination to bring back those memories, helped by some black-and-white photography of the store and its preserved architecture.
more photos
Apple will open its newest retail store in Australia on Thursday morning, inside the Castle Towers Shopping Centre in the far northwest suburbs of Sydney. The store is on the upper level in a huge corner space that faces the center of the mall, next to the David Jones store entrance. It will be the ninth store in Australia, and the fourth in the Sydney region. The store opens at 5 p.m. read more…
It was a multi-cultural waiting line for the grand opening of the Covent Garden (London) retail store, as people from many countries braved an overnight rain to visit the store and buy iPhones. Visitors from Turkey, Russia, Scotland, Germany, United States, the UK and other countries formed up at 10 a.m. Friday for the opening of Apple’s largest and most expensive store, which provided all sorts of surprises when they walked inside. The central courtyard under a huge skylight provided a place to begin their exploration of the retail space, which is divided into several separate areas over three levels. The various spaces are visually tied together by clever use of arched windows, which allow a view from one level to another, and from one space to another. The interior rooms, which might have been dark, are illuminated by skylights, windows and from the sun-lit courtyard. There is no other Apple like it, and it demonstrates how the challenges of building within an historic structure can be solved with thoughtful architecture. read more…
The Covent Garden (London) retail store that opens Saturday makes a leap beyond the goal of previous projects to maintain the building’s original architecture but still give visitors the classic Apple look-and-feel. In fact, unlike Regent Street (London), Opera (Paris) or Buchanan Street (Glasgow), this latest store has the least amount of Apple branding ever, leaving it an elegantly-looking brick and stone building in the shadow of one of London’s busiest public venues. In competition with street performers, a centuries-old market hall, restaurants and shops, the thousands of visitors to Covent Garden may pass the low-key exterior without realizing what waits inside: a very subtle upgrade with no stainless steel. Only three, black-metal, cut-out, Apple logo signs attract visitors initially, and even they are set back back 15 feet from the street, under a shady arcade framed by eight arches. There are eight double-doors leading inside the store, which has been totally restored to its original multi-hued red brick walls. The very wide front of the store has a spiral glass staircase to the right, and a series of wood display tables. The typical stone floor rounds out the familiar Apple store features. But overhead, there are architectural surprises. read more…