The grand open of the second Microsoft retail store in Mission Viejo (S. Calif.) on Thursday was attended by a throng of screaming teenage girls attracted by a pop singer, Microsoft executives in business suits and and a group of adults who were curious about what the store would look like. The company used a Justin Bieber concert as the cornerstone of their buzz campaign, a strategy that may have cost local schools district of thousands of dollars in state funding because eager teens skipped school to wait in line for concert tickets. What everyone saw when the white curtain came down in front of the store was a brightly-lit retail space with all the appearance of expense and quality, but actually composed of white paint, cheap wood and enough similarities to the Apple stores for any objective judge to rule the store is a “rip off.” read more…
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As the new fiscal year begins and the enormously important holiday shopping season approaches, Apple will roll out substantial changes to its retail employee job titles and duties, essentially making a U-turn to the simpler days of 2001. According to those who have seen the plans, Apple will consolidate three sales floor job positions into a single position that will perform all three job tasks. The company will also add a higher-paid job position on the sales floor to focus on “creating owners.” The changes are being made to handle the huge amount of traffic that the stores experience, and to improve flexibility for future sales innovations and changes. The job changes coincide with the switch to a single color of employee T-shirt reported here earlier. read more…
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A spokesperson for the Tacoma Mall (Wash.) has confirmed that Apple will open a store inside the mall by next year. Mall spokesperson Sarah Bonds told The News Tribune, Apple will occupy a portion of the 100,000 s.f. formerly occupied by the Nordstrom department store, which moved to another building within the mall. Job listings were posted last December for a store within the mall. However, the store was never constructed or opened, perhaps as part of the economic slowdown. Now Bonds says the store will open with an inside entrance, sharing the former Nordstrom space with Sephora and a third unnamed tenant. Bonds said Sephora and Apple will open in late spring or early summer, while the third tenant will open later in the year.
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After just one year of slowing down the growth of its retail store initiative, Apple says that it will resume the previous pace of opening stores, perhaps as many as 50 this year. In financial documents filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, Apple said that, historically, it has opened between 25 and 50 new retail stores per year. “During 2010, the Company expects to open a number of new stores near the upper end of this range,” the company said, with over half of those located outside of the United States. Apple opened 54 stores during fiscal 2008, but slowed down the expansion to just 26 new stores during FY 2009. In the SEC filing Apple also reported other figures not provided in financial reports released October 19th. First, the number of full-time equivalent positions did not change during the quarter, and remains at 16,500. Next, lease commitments for the retail stores now total $1.5 billion, a figure which has ranged between $1.3 billion and $1.5 billion for each of the last five quarters, despite the addition of new stores. Previously, total lease commitments had slowly increased by about $100 million each quarter. The stabilization of lease commitments seems to indicate that Apple has taken advantage of the economy, and has re-negotiated older leases and obtained favorable rates on new stores. Next, Apple reported that capital asset purchases were $167 million for the quarter, a new record for the number that has ranged from $30 million to $101 million over the last two years. And the spending should continue—the company forecast it will spend $400 during fiscal 2010 on retail capital asset purchases. Lastly, Apple expensed $26 million on corporate marketing for its 11 high-profile stores. This figure was also a record, in a two-year range of from $11 million to $17 million per quarter.
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Apple has formally announced the grand opening of its first retail store in France, located inside the underground Carrousel du Louvre shopping mall adjacent to the famous Louvre museum. According to photos posted by MacGeneration Web site, the store occupies a strangely-configured space, and includes tall stainless steel walls and a spiral glass staircase leading up to a mezzanine level. The store will open at 10 a.m. on Saturday, November 7th. Accoding to tipsters, the Montpelier store was ready to open before the Louvre location, but Apple wanted the Paris-based store to open first to emphasize its commitment to the city.
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The waiting line has formed outside The Shops at Mission Viejo (S. Calif.) for the Thursday morning grand opening of Microsoft’s second retail store. By 11 p.m. there were 75 persons in line, mostly teens or their parents hoping to get free tickets to a Microsoft-sponsored concert in the parking lot by singer Justin Bieber. The first person in line is a woman over 30 who is saving the place for her teenage daughter, and who arrived at 3 p.m. The next eight persons in line are also teen girls. There were no free Zune music players for the first five persons in line, like at the first store opening Scottsdale (Ariz.) last week. However, the store staff did come outside at 11 p.m. to hand out free copies of Windows 7. The weather is slightly overcast and it should dip into the mid-40s during the night. But everyone in line is prepared with jacket and blankets. By 6 a.m. the waiting line was only 10 to 12 persons more, apparently indicating that any crowd is waiting to arrive later. E-mail me any questions you have about the store and I’ll investigate when it opens at 10 a.m. Follow updates on Twitter/ifostore.
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It’s a long journey for the stone that Apple’s architects selected to enhance the retail stores, mined from a mountain quarry in Italy, precision cut into individual pieces by craftsman in nearby workshops, and then shipped in crates to new Apple stores around the world. Now it’s revealed that he process of creating the stone floor tiles and large wall slabs falls to the Il Casone quarry, formed in 1962 by four stonemason families with generations of experience in creating subtle beauty from rough rock. The company’s quarry is north of Florence in the small town of Firenzuola, in the heart of a geologic region of sandstone called Pietra Serena. The blue-gray color of the stone, its texture and tone all contribute to the overall look of the finished Apple store. read more…
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The last three months of each year always bring a rush of shoppers to Apple’s stores, creating record revenues but also challenging the stores to maintain the “surprise and delight” that visitors have come to expect during the holiday buying season. This year, Apple will update its operations to reduce visitor confusion and streamline sales. First, Apple will drop the aircraft carrier-like T-shirts that are color-coded to indicate the employees’ skills. Visitors have reported that seeing orange, dark blue, light blue, medium blue and black T-shirts is simply confusing. Beginning soon, the entire store staff will wear the same color T-shirt, with that color changing from time to time. Next—and more dramatically—employees will ditch the current EasyPay portable computers made by Symbol Technologies, and will begin using an iPod touch with an advanced scanner accessory and point-of-sale (POS) software. First, the iPod touch scanner will allow employees to capture data from products that have multiple barcodes using a single pass, including the UPC, Apple serial number and product code, cellular IMEI and ICCI numbers. Second, the new set-up will allow employees to accept cash for purchases without hiking to a central register position. The switch to the iPod touch is made possible by this year’s V3.0 software update, reported by AppleInsider back in April, that includes support for external devices. It’s not clear if Apple has programmed its own POS software or is using an application from another vendor. Apple debuted the current EasyPay POS system for the 2005 holiday buying season. It’s been generally successful from Apple’s perspective. However, employees have voiced many criticisms of EasyPay over the years, saying it suffers from crashes, loss of Wi-Fi connectivity and sluggish operation. The EasyPay devices run a version of the Windows CE operation system, feature a black-and-white screen and require a stylus to write signatures or make menu selections. Update: Tipsters say Apple developed the POS software that will run on the new iPod touch devices, and also designed and had built the battery pack for the device.
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Apple has pulled back the curtain on its next New York City store at 67th and Broadway, hinting that the grand opening may be soon and revealing the store’s official name. In a photo posted by Cnet, the plastic covering over the expansive glass façade now carries a deep red, velvet theater curtain motif, with the lower left side of the curtain pulled back slightly to reveal, “Opening soon.” Beneath that is the notation, “Apple Store Upper West Side.” The theater curtain reference is to the nearby Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, a multi-venue organization that hosts music, opera, theater, dance and multi-media events just two blocks south of the Apple store. During a conference call with financial analysts last week, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer confirmed the store would open during November. He also confirmed the opening of the Louvre (Paris) store in November, and that store’s construction barricade has also sprouted the notation “Soon” in French.
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Over the next six months Apple will reveal several amazing retail stores, most of them street-level stores beyond the United States. Now the SetteB.IT Web site offers an update on the construction progress for the future Frankfurt (Germany) and Covent Garden (London) stores, both set inside prominent historic buildings. Along Bockenheimer Strasse in Frankfurt, photos show that 1,800 pounds of glass was delivered to the store on a flatbed truck, ready to be installed for the glass staircase. At Covent Garden, the future store is covered with scaffolding and black plywood, all wrapped in white plastic. There is only the slimmest of views inside, which shows that Apple will be retaining many historic architectural features. The Frankfurt store could open by January 2010, and the Covent Garden store will open by May 2010.
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Apple will open its most northern retail store this Thursday, inside the new Union Square shopping center in Aberdeen (Scotland). At latitude 57º, the store will be further north than its closest cousins, including the Buchanan Street (Glasgow), Victoria Square (Belfast) and Arndale Center (Manchester) stores. Union Square is promoted as a “shopping and leisure destination,” with 60 shops, a 203-room hotel and 10-screen cinema, part of a redevelopment of the city-center. According to real estate sources, mall developer Hammerson has taken a $143 million loss on the project because of the economy, and was forced to offer tenants substantial incentives to move in. Rents in the mall were reduced to just $244,000 to $325,000, tenants received money for fit-out costs, and were offered up to two years rent-free. The Apple store will open at noon.
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In the midst of a heated national debate over legislation to provide all Americans with affordable health insurance, Apple will skip the controversy entirely and extend full-benefit medical insurance to part-time employees in January 2010. According to sources, the benefits now offered only to full-time employees, including those who work at the retail stores, will be offered to those working as few as 15 hours a week, which would include nearly all store employees. The insurance benefit will apply to employees who have at least one year of service with Apple. The change in coverage is significant, since American businesses have traditionally offered medical and other benefits only to full-time employees, and sometimes reduced benefits to those who work at least 20-hours a week. Apple has 16,500 full-time equivalent retail store employees, according to the company’s latest financial filing. It’s estimated the staff is composed of about 9,900 part-time employees who will be affected by the insurance change. Based on the average cost of medical insurance policies purchased by employers, the annual cost of extending medical benefits to part-time store employees could be at least $80 million a year. read more…
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Apple has signed an agreement with the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) to spend nearly $4 million to refurbish a run-down triangle of land next to its future Halsted Street retail store, including a subway entrance building, the underground train platform and a bus turnaround driveway. The project would be Apple’s most expansive spruce-up to date, and will help bring sparkle to the surrounding shopping district, which developers hope is on the rebound now that Apple is arriving. Structural steel has been erected for the store on Chicago’s north side, and the store could open by fall, 2010, being known as the “Lincoln Park” store. read more…
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Today Microsoft opened the first store in a renewed retail endeavor at the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Fashion Square shopping mall, with a large crowd drawn by tickets to a free Ashlby Tisdale music concert, free Zune HDs to the first five in line, $25 gift certificates in a gift bag, and highlighted by the company’s gift of $1.1 million to local charities. Microsoft COO Kevin Turner and other company executives in suits cut the red ribbon on the ground-floor, 60-foot wide store, and a curtain dropped to reveal a white interior, wood floor, wood display tables and front-to-back video screens on both sidewalls. Store employees wearing T-shirts in official Microsoft colors enthusiastically greeted the first visitors with hand-clapping and yelling. See photos of the store. read more…
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Workers were unable to complete the swap-out of a huge glass panel covering part of the George Street (Sydney) storefront Wednesday night because of equipment problems, a project required by a hole and crack that appeared last month. As reported by the ITnews Web site, the vertical crack appeared in the 42-foot tall panel on the right side of the storefront, and replacing the glass could cost $1 million. A new glass panel and a custom-built suction-operated holding device were recently delivered from Germany. On Wednesday night workers from the glass installation firm Kell & Rigby appeared at 8 p.m. to begin the removal and replacement process. The company handled the original installation of the store’s glass in early 2008. However, ITnews reports that the suction device apparently could not hold the glass panel, and after three attempts, the work was abandoned around 2 a.m.
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