Regent Street Apple Store

July 10, 2004

When it opens this fall, the Regent Street retail store will offer Apple Computer a extremely visible presence not only within London's most popular downtown shopping district, but also among the huge international community that visits the city as tourists.

Upon personally visiting the site of Apple's third international store, it's clear this will be an incredible retailing opportunity for Apple. The store is inside the first of several large, 1890-vintage buildings along Regent Street to be fully restored to their original glory. The renovated building will not only give Apple a prime position near Oxford Street, another major shopping avenue, but also give them the opportunity to stand out among the older, weathered stone façades that mark other retailers.

Even within the confines of this historically-preserved building, I'm sure Apple's architects have come up with some interesting features to draw in passersby. It's already known that it will feature Apple's now-traditionally glass staircase. But it's also likely the store will include other storefront features to bring even more visibility to the outlet.

I also visited the Champs Elysées in Paris to scout possible locations for an Apple retail store there...read my full report.

At this point, construction is still in full progress, both on the interior, the roof-top dome and the façade. The entire ground floor is barricaded with plywood, making it impossible to see what Apple's store front will look like (although check the architect's rendering). The upper floors are mainly covered with scaffolding covered with cloth. However, some scaffolding has been removed from the left half of the building, providing an opportunity to see what the final façade will look like.

The stonework is bright and cleaner than surrounding buildings, and shows off the stonework detail of the original design. There is some gold-colored, mosaic-type detailing visible near the second level of the building, where the Apple store will occupy the ground floor. The gold, blue and red mosaic is adjacent to the left arch, which will constitute the portion of the building that Apple will occupy. The roof dome is still surrounded by covered scaffolding, so it's impossible to tell what it will look like.

The shopping district of Regent Street begins at the Picadilly Circus landmark, where several streets come together to form a traffic jam, and create place to for tourists to congregate at a circular statute. Giant lighted billboards form the most famous feature, but there is now a Burger King and other American icons at Picadilly as well. From Picadilly the city's theater district runs along Coventry Street, Trafalgar Square is just a few blocks away, and Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament are a bit further down the hill.

From Picadilly, Regent Street extends in a wide, spectacular curve towards Oxford Street, about six blocks away. The buildings are about five stories tall, and feature distinctive repeated patterns of stonework, iron railings and windows. Looking down that first block, an American can find no domestic comparison. Our buildings are much smaller and more delicate when compared to anything on this street.

Within two blocks Regent Street straightens out and becomes less impressive for its view, but just as interesting for individual buildings, which include columns, arches and other details. This section is almost a hodge-podge of design, although your eye can pick up some symmetry and repeated patterns in the massive buildings.

The stonework façades are weathered, the sidewalks of large stone are foot-beaten, and there's no doubt that you're in historic London. Few retailers have been able to jump out of the color and history of this section of Regent Street, either with a break-through design, color or lighting. Most new store, high-end stores have been restricted to putting in larger windows within the confines of the original stonework. Some stores have used darker-colored frames around their windows, which tends to blend in with the original building. Others have simply retained the original storefront design.

In fact, the really high-end retailers have taken their stores over to Bond Street, some planted in new buildings, others in old. Bond Street starts with DeBeers Diamonds and... well, it continues on down the street with other ritzy retailers.

Back on Regent Street, no retailers have been able to completely re-do the sidewalk in front of their stores--something Apple traditionally does for their flagship stores. Niketown, about a block from Apple's future store, has re-done seven feet of sidewalk nearest to their building, but left the original stonework beyond that to the street. So far, there has been no re-do of the Apple site sidewalk--I'm betting they'll perform some work eventually.

When I visited in July, there was a huge influx of tourists from almost every European community, but particularly lots of Italians. Of course the major attractions were being mobbed, but the Regent/Oxford shopping areas were also full of visitors, and the stores were jammed. Especially popular were sporting goods stores, sport shoes and music stores.

Overall, the street seems like the Ginza in Tokyo, but with the heavy foot traffic and hectic pace of the outer Nathan Road (Kowloon) shopping areas in Hong Kong. Weekends are particularly busy, as residents and tourists alike descend on the area for their shopping.

Without an Apple store, Londoners have had to rely on authorized resellers to purchase their Macintosh gear and iPods. The Tottenham Court Road electronics and computer stores are located about six blocks from Regent Street, and include at least three branches of the Micro Anvika chain, along with all sorts of glitzy, crowded and brightly-lit electronics stores. Sony also has what they call a "galleria" here to show their complete line of products, similar to their expanding line of SonyStyle stores in the U.S. The large John Lewis department store on Oxford Street near Regent also sells Macintosh gear in the 5th-floor electronics department.

In general, the stores displayed and arranged Apple products prominently. Unlike some other mish-mash electronics stores I've seen, most of these store had separate areas or shelves for Apple's laptops, desktops, software and accessories, and devoted a fair amount of space to it. At one Micro Anvika store, the front-most displays were all Macintosh, while at another store the Macintosh gear was all to the left as you entered, and all the Windows computers were to the right. The John Lewis store had a nicely-arranged and lit section devoted only to Macintosh (although staffing is an issue). Overall, I have to give the local resellers a "B" grade for selling a 5% solution.

Here's a summary of prices I noted for Apple products at London's resellers:

As you can see, Apple products would be no bargain for an American buying in London--but that's not Apple's purpose or fault. The cost of the Pound Sterling has increased over the past year by about 20%, making everything more expensive for Americans in Britain (or looking at it another way, the value of the dollar has decreased). By the way, the cost of Apple products in Japan is similarly more expensive. The Ginza store prices were set to match American prices exactly, but pegged somewhat before the store opened. By the time of the Ginza grand opening, the price of the Yen had increased vs. the dollar, making it seem that Apple products were more expensive.

On the other hand, $327 for an iPod mini--if that's an equivalent expensive price in the UK-- seems like a lot. Similarly, $682 for a 40 Gb iPod seems very, very expensive for a digital music player. Perhaps these prices don't quite represent "expensive" as they appear in American dollars.

For those who plan to attend the grand opening of the Regent Street store, there are plenty of Starbucks (some are T-Mobile hotspots) in the vicinity, lots of drug stores, restaurants and fast-food outlets. There are several up-scale hotels in the area, along with a few mid-range hotels, and then lots of what they call hotels, but are really bed-and-breakfast without the breakfast. There are several huge Internet "libraries" in the area (associated with Subway restaurants!), with 200 or 300 Windows-based computers for log-in by buying a ticket ($1.80 an hour). Believe me, it's a tough way to surf and send e-mail!

The photos below show the Apple store site, Regent Street in general, and various Apple retailers in the area. Also check some random notes I took on my trip.

Also check the photos taken a week later with the scaffolding removed.