Job listings and tipsters have updated information about two Apple store in Italy that will open later this year. According to the Ispazio.net Web site, the stores will appear in Torino alongside upscale retailers on Via Roma, and in Rome at the Porta di Roma shopping center. First, an on-going surveillance of Apple’s job listings has revealed a new store location in Torino that has been rumored for two years. Store watchers say the likely location is in the former Mondadori bookstore at Via Roma 80, an impressive arcade in the midst of many other international retailers. Second, a black construction barricade has appeared on the ground floor of the Porta di Roma shopping center north of city center in Rome. Job listings for the store appeared last November. It would be the second Apple store for each city. The Torino store could open in August, while the Rome store could open by May. mall plan
Almost two years after the site of a future Apple store in Basel (Switzerland) was spotted by local bloggers, blueprints have now been discovered that confirm the two-level store. The plans not only show a storefront and building configuration that is typically Apple, they also show the placement of tables and other furniture that is identical to Apple stores. As reported by MacPrime.ch, Apple’s architect has been revising its original plans over the past year in accordance with city regulations. Originally, Apple proposed a 30-foot tall glass curtain wall for the storefront, spanning the ground floor and mezzanine level. However, the latest proposal submitted last October includes demolishing the current building at Freie Strasse 47 and building a single-level glass façade, MacPrime says. The upper levels would be behind standard windows. The store will have a 48-foot wide storefront, and span about 7,500 square-feet of retail space, and another 2,800 square-feet of offices and stock in the basement. A glass staircase connects the two levels at the rear of the space, the plans show. The project will cost about $6.3 million could be completed in early 2013.
One of the most unusual and amazing architectural designs for an Apple store will reportedly appear in Aix en Provence (France), featuring a nearly all-glass structure enabled by new technology developed by Apple’s glass suppliers. According to AixEnProvence.fr magazine, the current tired-looking tourism office on the south side of Place du General de Gaulle will be demolished and the Apple store will be constructed at the site. A rendering posted by the magazine shows a one-level structure set back on a broad stone plaza, with a tan-colored rear wall, and all other encompassing walls made of glass. A second rendering shows the store is an extension of a design roughly based on the Upper West Side (NYC) store. Typically for Apple, the rendering does not show any Apple-like features and there are no visible Apple logos. According to the magazine, the city required Apple to build to new earthquake standards, and harmonize with the surrounding picturesque streets. The city is in the south of France, and is favored by good weather and thousands of tourists each year. The area to the west of the future store has been recently reconstructed with many upscale shops from international retailers. According to the magazine the store could open by late 2012 or early 2013. rendering
Just one month after Apple opened its first store in Valencia (Spain), a nearby authorized Apple reseller has laid off its staff and closed its doors, a victim of competition from the Apple store. Illa Digital is just four blocks from the Calle Colón Apple store, and opened four years ago as the city’s first Apple Premium Reseller, the highest level of certification for a reseller. Illa Digital was the only reseller serving the city center when the Apple store opened last December 3rd. According to ValenciaPlaza.com,, the store’s owner noticed revenue began to decline after the Apple store opened. Finally this week, the store’s owners laid off all four of the store’s employees and the store went dark. A second reseller, K-Tuin, has a store further north from city center, and for now is still in operation, the Web site notes. From the time the first Apple stores opened in 2001, Apple executives have claimed that business for resellers actually improves. Resellers have generally disputed that claim, but acknowledge that they must substantially adjust their customer focus in order to remain successful after an Apple store arrives in their customer region. map
Once again, China’s Apple retail stores have been overrun by scalpers, who pushed ordinary customers out of the way and egged a store on the first day of iPhone 4s sales. Like previous versions sold in China, the iPhone 4s is unlocked, allowing opportunists to employee line sitters and shill buyers, then resell the iPhones at a premium within China, or ship them to other countries for a profit. At least 1,000 people were in line overnight at the Sanlitun (Beijing) on Friday in 16° temperatures, with the scalpers identifiable by their bright red baseball caps. According to MicGadget, the scalpers were being paid $16 and provided a free breakfast to line-sit overnight. By daybreak the waiting line overwhelmed private security guards, and city police officers soon arrived to manage the crowd. Apple’s corporate security team has extensive experience in handling large waiting lines for store openings and product debuts. However, those lines are usually not interested in earning a profit, and are completely cooperative. Update: At mid-day Friday Apple announced the Beijing and Shanghai stores will not sell the iPhone 4s “for the time being” to ensure the safety of its store visitors. The iPhone will only be available from the on-line store, China Telecom or authorized resellers, the company said. read more
In the midst of looking for a new job, planning a wedding and moving to Scotland, the last thing Taryn B. needed just before Christmas was the hijacking of her Gmail account and a series of fraudulent emails sent to friends and relatives asking for money. It not only happened to the New York state resident, but Taryn claims her troubles were caused by an Apple retail store Specialist who refused to let her sign out of her Gmail account after an iPad purchase. According to Taryn, the Specialist may have skimmed personal information from her account and sent the fraudulent emails herself, or may have sold the information to others. Those emails claimed Taryn and her boyfriend had been mugged in Spain, and asked for money to pay medical bills and buy airline tickets back home. In a telephone interview with IFO, Taryn says other employees in the store dismissed her continued efforts to gain access to the laptop and log out. She also received no help from Apple customer service representatives who answered the company’s main support telephone numbers. In fact, the reps declined to take any information from her that might lead to an investigation of the the crime. If Taryn’s serious allegations are true, any involved Apple employees would be in violation of federal laws pertaining to unauthorized computer access, a crime that could result in a one-year prison sentence upon conviction. details
Facing an increasing number of Genius Bar visitors and the resulting stress on employees, Apple has reportedly chosen to create store-within-a-store zones at a select group of Target stores, rather than open more of its own stores that would provide additional points of service and support. According to AppleInsider, Apple will install Apple-branded zones within 25 Target stores over the next year, in cities that don’t currently qualify for a stand-alone Apple store. Neither the locations of the stores or their selection criteria has been revealed. Presumably the zones will be staffed by Apple Sales Consultants (ASC), Apple-hired and trained employees who have been staffing some of Best Buy’s Apple zones for several years. Apple has said that it will open only about 10 U.S. retail stores this year, preferring to emphasize international expansion. That slow pace of U.S. expansion means that Genius Bars at existing stores are even more crowded. Service and support at Apple stores is arguably the most critical element of the company’s retail operation, providing quick solutions for customers and creating customer loyalty. Update: On January 12th Target confirmed that it would install “expanded displays” of Apple products in 25 of its stores. However, a spokesperson declined to further describe the arrangement with Apple or what the displays would look like and which products would be sold. details
The start of the new year has brought a resumption of Apple’s on-going store expansion project, kicked off for 2012 at the Florida Mall south of Orlando where the store will more than triple in size. The Apple store opened in September 2005 with about 2,700 square-feet, now a considered a small space for the large number of daily visitors. According to insiders, the Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn stores will soon vacate, although it’s unknown if they’re relocating to other spaces in the mall or closing completely. Shortly after, construction will begin to expand the 30-foot wide Apple store into a portion of the adjacent vacant space. Mall lease plans suggest the finished store will have a 90 foot-wide storefront with 8,640 square-feet. Apple has said that over 100 stores have been remodeled and expanded over the past two years to accommodate more visitors. Early stores were in the range of 5,000 to 6,000 square-feet, but the size of stores soon drifted downward to about 3,000 square-feet. With the increased popularity of Apple’s products and more customer dependence on the Genius Bars, larger stores have become a necessity. Recent new stores, even in shopping malls, have been larger, in some cases exceeding the original 6,000 square-foot size. Update: Additional tipsters say that—incredibly—Microsoft will take a portion of the Williams-Sonoma/Pottery Barn space for a retail store, putting it right next to the expanded Apple store. In addition, Dell will open a store down the hallway at the Harry & David space. diagram
Proving that broken glass doors are a common problem of operating Apple’s retail stores, photos of a crazed panel at the West 14th Street (NYC) store have surfaced after an incident last month. It’s not clear how the south-facing door was broken, although wind is always a culprit. Besides a photo of the sad-looking door panel leaning against the storefront, the photos show that workers quickly appeared to replace the panel with black plywood. The store has two sets of double doors, so visitor traffic was never completely interrupted by the door closure. A similar incident occurred last month at the Lehigh Valley (Penn.) store, reportedly the ninth broken door for the year.
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Last June tipsters pointed to a future Apple store in Sydney (Australia), and now a black construction barricade on the third level of the Broadway Shopping Centre confirms the information. Passersby say that the company’s traditional black-painted plywood now covers units 303 to 307, a space totaling nearly 6,000 square-feet. The mall is adjacent to a technical college with 10,000 students. It is also about 1½ miles from the existing George Street Apple store, and three miles from the Bondi Junction store. Based on construction schedules, this store could open this fall. photos
If tipsters are correct, Apple threw a dart at the map of North America to locate a new store, and it nearly landed in the Atlantic Ocean. Instead, the dart stuck in the Halifax Shopping Centre (Nova Scotia), where the future store will become the eastern-most location in North America. In fact, it’s 350 miles further east than the next-closest Maine Mall store. According to the allNovaScotia.com Web site (sub.), the future store will appear near the Sears store, in an area that’s been under construction since mid-November. Workers are reportedly relocating an escalator and building a mezzanine level where the Apple store will eventually appear. The mall was renovated in 2007, and recently has been adding several upscale retailers to serve the province’s one million residents. There are already 22 Apple stores in Canada, with possibly another four opening during 2012. mall plan
A former Apple store Genius who was allegedly bullied by managers into resigning from the Arrowhead (Ariz.) store has just posted an email to company CEO Tim Cook, thanking him for the job experience, but warning that the stores have shifted from life-enriching to life-draining for employees. Chad Ramey, 39, posted the email on a Web site shortly after finishing his final shift. “It was truly one of the most heart-wrenching moments of my life when I had to walk out of that store for the last time,” he wrote Cook. “No one likes to abandon their passion,” he said, “and helping Apple’s customers was not only something that I loved to do, but also something that I gave my entire heart and soul doing.” Ramey said he’s watched as Apple’s retail stores shifted, “from something truly spectacular and wonderful, to big-box retail that is no better than a Best Buy or a Walmart.” He added, “What was once a truly enriching place to work has become a place that leeches and drains everything from their employees. Apple retail no longer values its people and when I say people, I am referring to both your customers and your retail employees serving you on the front-lines.” read more…
A painted image on a Düsseldorf (Germany) construction side barricade has sparked speculation that the future Kö-Bogen development will include an Apple retail store. The development is currently under construction, and is scheduled to open in 2013 with many upscale, international retailers on the ground level, and offices in the upper floors. The 432,000 square-foot development was designed by noted architect Daniel Libeskind, who has worked on several other high-profile projects, including the Ground Zero site in New York City. His design for Kö-Bogen includes a roof terrace, green courtyards and parking structure, all connecting the various buildings over two city blocks. During construction, passersby noticed a rendering of the development painted onto a construction barricade. Within that rendering, they say, is the image of iPods inside a store, leading to the speculation Apple could become a tenant at the site. However, architects and developers commonly include specific retailers in their renderings to make them more realistic, even if the retailers haven’t signed leases. Apple has eight stores in Germany, and a ninth store is under construction in Berlin. The nearest store to Düsseldorf is the CentrO store, 25 miles north in Oberhausen. renderings
It was an ordinary day at an ordinary mall, as visitors came and went at the Lehigh Valley (Penn.) Apple store last Wednesday. The temperature was sagging into the lower 30s, but the winds were heading the opposite way under overcast skies—from just 8 mph as the sun rose, to 15 mph by 10 a.m. Finally, by 1 p.m. the winds had picked up, with gusts up to 37 mph. As a visitor opened the glass front door of the west-facing Apple store, the wind caught the panel and slammed it into the full-open position. The glass shattered into a “million tiny pieces,” a witness said, frightening visitors but barely gaining the attention of the employees—it was the ninth time this year the door had broken, according to one witness. Apparently the orientation of the building, the swing angle of the entrance door and the region’s weather conditions conspire to keep breaking the doors. Earlier this year both doors were busted out by the wind. A witness says Apple employees quickly moved to sweep up the glass from this latest incident, as customers walked back and forth through the void. The Apple employees routinely tossed on their red fleece pullovers and coats to stay warm. Within a couple of hours black plywood replaced the shattered glass…and business was back to normal. diagram
Apple will continue its expansion in Canada with a store at the Masonville Place mall in the city of London (Ont.), filling in coverage between existing stores in the Toronto (Ont.) and Detroit (Mich.) regions. According to real estate sources, Apple will move into the upper-level space that Eddie Bauer will vacate this week as part of its earlier bankruptcy filing. The nearly-square space covers about 6,176 square-feet next to a Gap store, with a 73-foot storefront. As confirmation, city records indicate that planning officials are reviewing a $3 million construction project for the mall that includes an Apple logo. The store would be about halfway between the existing Conestoga store in Canada and the Partridge Creek store in Michigan, and could open in fall 2012. read more…