Apple Stores Demonstrate That Retail Still Lives 416
WheezyJoe writes "Maybe OS X Leopard has its problems, but the New York Times seems to think Apple has designed the ideal techie retail store. A policy that encourages lingering, with dozens of fully functioning computers, iPods and iPhones for visitors to try, even for hours on end (one patron wrote a manuscript entirely at the store) has 'given some stores, especially those in urban neighborhoods, the feel of a community center ... Meanwhile, the Sony flagship store on West 56th Street, a few blocks from Apple's Fifth Avenue store, has the hush of a mausoleum. And being inside the long and narrow blue-toned Nokia store on 57th Street feels a bit like being inside an aquarium. The high-end Samsung Experience showroom, its nuevo tech music on full blast one recent morning, was nearly empty.'"
Apples and pears? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, that is a lame run-on. If you can't think of a good one to put in the summary, don't.
Who'da thunk it! (Score:5, Insightful)
A policy that encourages lingering, with dozens of fully functioning computers, iPods and iPhones for visitors to try, even for hours on end (one patron wrote a manuscript entirely at the store) has 'given some stores, especially those in urban neighborhoods, the feel of a community center
Wait, you mean that a store that lets people freely do whatever they wish to do with little restrictions is more successful than a store in which you can just buy and leave? Who'da thunked it!
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:3, Insightful)
techie (Score:5, Insightful)
If I were going to buy a computer, the first thing I would do once I got it is open it up and see what I could improve down the road. This is probably why I've never been inside an Apple store. I think the NYT is using the word techie the same way they'd use the word "foodie." Foodies aren't cooks, don't necessarily know anything about cooking, but they do know what they like. And they'll tell you why.
I think the appeal of Apple computers is different (but related) to the appeal of the computers themselves.
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:3, Insightful)
That all said, I still get uncomfortable in a place like Louis Vutton. I feel like they instinctively know I don't have as much money as I feel like I am supposed to have, and will treat me accordingly. But that's all in my head.
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not a bug, it's a feature. They know their target demographic.
Re:Prices aren't ideal (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple sells cool. (Score:3, Insightful)
On-site tech support is key. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the crowds suck. Yes, the stores just scream "rip-off margins." Yes, "genius bar" is a stupid name.
Still, the ability to schlep a system in and have the problem worked in most cases while-u-wait is what gets people into those stores. (Try that with a Dell or an HP sometime. Whoops! Hope you like shipping things. And for a real laugh, try bringing a sony product into a 'Sony Style' store for a support or repair issue.)
-Isaac
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:2, Insightful)
geek squad repeatedly erased all my data (even when explicitly instructed not to), and installed the same buggy, problematic software on it again, ensuring that i'd have need of their services in the future. at no point did they ever bother trying to figure out what was wrong; the solution would invariably be to reformat and reinstall. on more than one occasion, i caught them going through (opening and examining) my files, and copying my music. i've actually watched them (unintentionally) install viruses, simply because they're utterly incompetent.
fanbois in general are to be disliked, but the stores don't reek of arrogance- to the contrary, their startling success (especially with people who are openly computer illiterate) is quite telling. i think you're just insecure because you apparently take issue with the fact that some of the employees look a bit scruffy....which isn't even remotely relevant. grow up.
Effective Business (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:On-site tech support is key. (Score:5, Insightful)
Get best buy to triple wages, and hire based on competence+skill and not certifications+willingness to be whores, and you will be able to do the same thing in the PC world.
Problem is it's far easier to justify buying a new $499.99 PC instead of spending $350.00 on fixing the thing. while a $2100.00 MAC is worth having $350.00 of work done to it.
Re:Prices aren't ideal (Score:5, Insightful)
Its hard to decide from looking at newegg screenshots whether you want a glossy or matte screen on your next monitor, or whether the mouse you're eyeing is going to actually fit in your hand comfortably, or how that funky ergonomic keyboard feels, etc, etc, etc.
Tech savvy people shop at the boutiques/big boxes but buy at the online discounter. If that proves successful enough, and the boutiques and big boxes disappear... where are you going to shop? Are the online discounters going to open up boutiques so you can see and feel the stuff before you buy it? And if so... will you pay the markup they're going to have to charge to cover it... or will you shop at the newegg boutique but buy at 'hole-in-the-wall-online-discounter'?
Pure online works for products you've previously worked with, or where the specs alone are all that matter... like CPU's, or hard drives. But when choosing an HDTV, are you really going to be satisfied with buying it before SEEING it? When buying shoes are you going to be satisfied with buying it before trying it on? A good return policy helps... but you usually have to suck up the shipping costs, which can add up fast...
I find people who heavily advocate online dealers like newegg are usually leeching shopping touch it/see it services from local boutiques. Being able to see and touch a product before buying it has value... and its an issue newegg and the like haven't really addressed. While shopping at boutiques and buying online isn't sustainable - if everyone did it, boutiques would disappear.
Re:The Rainbow Connection (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The controlled atmosphere seems to work, but (Score:3, Insightful)
Another way to look at it is "their VAR and retailer friends" were killing Apple. The Apple-specialist retailers were almost uniformly horrible in terms of customer service - think Comic Book Guy meets shady mechanic. The big retailers were indifferent at best - except for some abortive efforts with CompUSA there were no Apple 'boots on the ground' to explain to customers why the Mac was worth the price premium over the Packard Bell sitting next to it.
The only reasonable way to buy Apple gear and accessories back then was mail-order, and it was back to the Comic Book Guy if you needed support.
I think Apple's retail strategy has been integral to their resurgence.
-Isaac
Re:Prices aren't ideal (Score:3, Insightful)
2) Apple sells everything at MSRP. That's "suggested retail price" or "full retail." Like Nordstrom does for clothing. Their markups are not "the worst you've ever seen," they're just "retail price." Apple doesn't discount in its stores, and they do have sales, but it's pretty rare.
Re:Prices aren't ideal (Score:3, Insightful)
More stores should stick to branding. My grandfather (a former Sears exec) is still convinced that the undoing of Sears was (at least in large part) due to their abandonment of branding.
Re:the samsung "store" doesn't sell anything (Score:4, Insightful)
apple stores sell apples latest products and you can get customer service there. On top of that if you are having problems with your mac or just want to learn some new software they have people who will teach you for an hourly fee of course, and are fairly patient.
When was the last time someone sat down with your mom and showed them how to use "random photo album software here" for an hour? when done that lady new more than i do, but then again i can figure out every thing I missed.
Re:the samsung "store" doesn't sell anything (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:5, Insightful)
This might previously have been a problem for Apple, but now it's anything but. Any sort of "cult" feel (I'd venture to say more like "club" feel) works to their advantage. People on the outside want to know what's so special. It doesn't hurt that the trickle down effect from a large portion of vocal Internet community (i.e. bloggers) is in full swing. Even though Macs are obviously in the general minority, there is a feel that they're more than that.
Re:Who'da thunk it! (Score:3, Insightful)
Where do you trolls put your brains before you reply.
Re:well, maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't understand how the New York Times can call them the ideal techie retail store.
Maybe if your idea of 'techie' is someone who has a friend who owns the O'Reilly 'Programming Python' book, or something equally dubious.
Re:loiterers (Score:4, Insightful)
Isobella Jade's Portfolio [isobelladreams.com]
Why they work (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Open, bright. Stores are well-lit, spacious, have an inviting entrance, and allow visitors to browse.
3. Products sell themselves. Rather than relying on salespeople to pressure customers to purchase goods, the stores consistently showcase the products and let the customer try it in order to make the purchasing decision on their own terms. Salespeople are there to answer questions, not push visitors into buying.
4. Availability of customer service. The customer-oriented services (Genius Bar, Studio, kids' area, demos) demonstrate that Apple is interested in making the shopping experience comfortable.
Now, bear in mind, Apple is in it to make money. That's just the reality. But the company's philosophy is that money is made by creating the best possible product and the best possible consumer experience. They don't do these things out of the goodness of their hearts; rather, these things are the consequence of the particular business model they have chosen. That their motives are sometimes misunderstood is unfortunate, not because of how it reflects upon Apple, but rather, how it is symptomatic of the fact that we as a society of consumers have become so jaded by the way the rest of corporate America approaches profitability in a free-market system that we DO get confused when a company DOESN'T believe that the easiest way to make money is to rape us for every last penny they can lie, cheat, and steal from us.
So, to be certain, the Apple Retail Stores are a classic example of retail design through careful analysis and re-evaluation of consumer behavior. They don't do these things because they make you feel good; they do them because, as a way of increasing profitability, it just plain WORKS. For instance, in-store cameras do not merely monitor visitors for security purposes--these are used to analyze traffic flow patterns, how long people spend in the various sections of the store, and so forth. This data is then used in research towards redesigning the stores or figuring out how marketing efforts should be distributed.
Finally, regarding those who have missed the point.... Every time I've been to Fry's I feel like I want to scream. Customer service is HORRIBLE; the crowds are rude; dealing with exchanges/returns is downright insane; and most of all, the whole place reeks of cheapness. I feel like I can't trust whatever I buy there, and even if I were to, I don't feel like I've saved much if anything at all. I'd rather buy online. And the whole "techie" thing--let's be honest, Apple isn't interested in marketing to the uber-nerd DIY hacker, whose "can I take it apart and customize the crap out of it" mentality runs counter to Apple's "we want to make everything work together seamlessly, including the shopping experience" philosophy. You may take great pride in those hacker skills, and that's great, but the article isn't about you. It's about the consumer who would've gotten a cheap-ass Dell not because they wanted to spend as little as possible and put Ubuntu on it, but because they just don't know any better. After all, this is the age of consumer electronics.
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, why would you ever expect someone to fix their mistake? The nerve of these people, setting the customer right after something went wrong! They're going out of business in no time if they keep up this level of customer satisfaction.
Re:On-site tech support is key. (Score:3, Insightful)
Your repair took at least two days (one for parts to be shipped, another for the tech) versus going to a store and having the work done same-day. This matters for some people. (Granted, the availability of service appointments in Apple stores can be a real problem in some cities.)
-Isaac
Re:Prices aren't ideal (Score:1, Insightful)
Or you could shop at Costco -- a big box store that's not evil, and actually treats its employees right. Not really a tech store, but hey.
It's funny, Costco is generally a lot more profitable than Walmart, and yet Walmart is the one that all the cable news business "experts" have boners for. I guess union-smashing and employee mistreatment pushes their buttons better.
Re:loiterers (Score:1, Insightful)
Besides, struggling farmers still have town clothes/shoes - we don't go to town covered in 'farm' or stinking of barn. And no, I don't where cowboy boots, ever.
Re:You can smell the pomposity (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:3, Insightful)
Simply put, your "feeling" may mean very well for the future of Apple. I might join, *despite* the cult atmosphere.
On the related note, the decline in the legendary Thinkpad was instrumental in my plan to switch. I run Linux exclusively now, but look at the build quality difference between the T43 and T60 as Lenovo took over IBM thinkpad development. Sad.
Meanwhile, the Macbooks look sleek and well designed...
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:4, Insightful)
Just out of curiosity, what makes the Airport Extreme worth the extra $80 compared to a non-Apple 802.11n router?
They don't alienate 52% of the population. (Score:3, Insightful)
Now that you mention it, I see a much higher percentage of women in the Apple store, than I do in the CompUSA a few blocks away. There isn't a Fry's in NYC, so I can't compare to that although earlier posts have hailed it as a tech mecca. I wonder what percentage of Fry's customers are women?
Re:Community center (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Bad vibe (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Rainbow Connection (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:The people working there, because they want to. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:"Genius" bar (Score:2, Insightful)
I know it is bullshit because nobody on God's Earth is such a black-hearted evil bastard of a fucking prick that they would pick on a helpless retail salesperson.
Not even Hitler himself would give a person this much flak for something so far outside of their own control.
Not to mention that any Apple Employees that value their position as 'employed' would never disclose anything regarding future Apple products.
Thanks for the little story, though.
Re:Apple sure succeeds as contrarians (Score:2, Insightful)
I made the same call in July, but not before trying to get Ubuntu to run right on my laptop. I never got wireless to work, and besides, it doesn't run anything I need for work. I hadn't given the Mac a serious look in years, but I went down to the store and started fiddling. I liked what I saw. I bought a MacBook. 5 months into owning it, it is now my main machine (wish I'd gotten the Pro!). Every time I have to use XP, I get pissed at how horrible it is in comparison. Leopard has been great; having my mounted drives and servers on the desktop like in Ubuntu is wonderful (I have never understood MS's weird "My Computer" UI decision); labeling folders in a list of them with a color so I can find ones I'm currently using a lot is amazingly useful; it actually does better on the Windows Server 2003 network at work than the XP machine they gave me, so I don't use that anymore; it comes with Gutenprint drivers for every printer under the sun; It manages moving between multiple networks without me having to do anything; when it crashes, it does so gracefully; it wakes from sleep in about 1 second; it handles external monitors better than Windows; I can still run all my necessary Windows apps (statistics apps) via VMware or Boot Camp with absolutely no noticeable degradation in speed or reliability; I have never typed on such a rock-solid laptop keyboard in my life; multitouch trackpads are awesome--why isn't this the norm?; bluetooth peripherals without any stupid little dongles hanging off the USB ports are just so slick; the iLife suite is actually usable and useful; I picked up iWork for Keynote--it is as great as rumored...
I have gone from viciously mocking my Mac-loving graphic designer friends to seriously wanting nothing to do with MS OSes again. It's been so much better than I'd thought. You can customize the OS more than in Windows, so it doesn't have to be so dopey as it can be. It scales very nicely from noob to power user. And it's UNIX!
I do not work for Apple. I just have been kicking myself for not getting on the platform earlier. It's really good. Jump!
Come on in, the water's fine! (Score:3, Insightful)
What really pisses me off is my current XP laptop is certainly going to be the last Windows unit I own so I'll be forced to make the jump on the next one to Ubuntu or OSX. I've grudgingly settled for Microsoft products because it's a shitty platform that also happens to support most of the software I use and shitty support is better than nothing. With OSX I'll still be able to run XP in a VM. Shit. Looks like I'm going to finally become one of those Mac weenies I used to make fun of.
I bought my first PC (a 286 that came with nothing other than DOS) back in like '88/89, for a whopping $2300. From then until August of this year, I was a PC man, buying cases and upgrading the contents in a sort of never ending upgrade cycle. I learned a lot about PC assembly that I would never have learned otherwise, but mostly it was a constant pain in the butt, and undoubtedly very expensive. I learned to loathe each version of Microsoft's Windows along the way as well. 95, 98, 2000, XP - while each was an improvement over the previous versions, each seemed poorly thought out, poorly implemented and buggy as hell. We won't even go into the major pain in the ass of constantly updating antivirus software, antispyware etc. I would love to have switched to a Mac at any point in this cycle, but they were always just out of price reach, and I couln't justify it.
Yes, during this time I did play with various Linux distros, FreeBSD etc. I used them for work mostly and I enjoyed using them immensely, but my home system had to remain under the fell control of MS - because I play games. If you play PC games you *must* run a windows system unless you are prepared to wait a few years for your favourite game to come out for the Mac, and prepared to see only 1 in 50 games ever have a Mac version.
In August, I bought a 20" IMac, installed Bootcamp, installed a clean new copy of XP SP2, and now I have the best of both worlds. When I work on my computer, I do so in OSX, when I want to play games I boot into the toy OS and play one of my games. The only other application I use under Windows at the moment is Firefox because sometimes when you are gaming you need to look up data on a website. Other than that I only spend time in Windows when gaming. If I did need to run an old Windows legacy application, I have a copy of Parallels installed so I can run it virtually if I need to in any case. The IMac and OSX meet all of my needs, and so far faultlessly. I haven't had a single problem, a single glitch, or a single instance of anything I couldn't do under OSX that I used to do under XP, and it all runs faster and more efficiently than it ever did under my XP box. I admit it took some adaption (I don't like OSX file dialogs at all, I miss the tree of folders from Windows immensely) and theres still a lot to learn, but so far the Mac has simply worked perfectly.
I am afraid I am totally converted. The IMac/OSX computing experience is so far above what I had under Windows its like comparing driving a Jaguar to driving a Yugo. It was worth every dollar it cost me to get the beautiful desktop monitor-cum-computer that I ended up with, and I have more room on my (physical) desktop to boot. I expect this system will be more than sufficient for my needs for the next few years - even with gaming taken into consideration - and I won't have to upgrade anything to speak of. If I do decide to upgrade then the old system will have retained a lot of its old value unlike a replaced PC which I usually end up giving away because they are pretty worthless by the time they need replacing. I feel free of the constant recycling and upgrading system I had gotten locked into, and to be honest it feels great. Hopefully it still feels great 3 years from now (I recognize my opinions may have changed by then). Five months in though and I don't regret it in the slightest.
Re:Apples and pears? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll buy "Club" feel way before "Cultish". They seem bright and inviting to me. As an accused cultist (stop calling me that!), I can say that from the inside of the Apple Store, the feeling is "why would people keep torturing themselves with that other kind of computer?" Lately, it's OK to look inside and find there's not much of a cult.
I wasn't so impressed by the service (Score:3, Insightful)
Second, it's nice to have a support section (Genius Bar), but if I have to make an appointment and wait for two hours to talk to someone to ask a simple pre-sales question which the sales staff couldn't answer, I'm definitely not going to be impressed.