I had the occasion after a lunch meeting in London to walk into the Apple, Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) retail store on Regent Street in the heart of London. It's a Monday afternoon in March, a time when most retail establishments are yawning. Too early for Easter and of course back-to-school is exactly that -- in school.
What absolutely stunned me was the store was packed -- and with buyers. It felt like the Christmas season. The clerk I spoke too, Reginald, who called me "mate" (you hear that a lot here!), was as knowledgeable as they come. Whether the subject was the various iPods, Mac systems, even boring CPU units, this guy knew it all. What was even more surprising was his enthusiasm -- the British are not known for that!
Apple registers over $4,000 per year in sales per square foot of retailing space, the leader in the retailing industry. I can see why, as customers are kept entertained with evolving and changing graphics on the Mac screens, with one Mac screen detailing the advantages of being an iTunes member.
The customers in the store represented all walks of life, from the briefcase crowd speaking in hushed tones, to the nap sack crowd upgrading their iPods. I heard Italian, French, German and Japanese spoken in the store. My "mate" Reginald even knew the proper etiquette of bowing with the Japanese customers and explaining that all software products from Apple are also written in Japanese -- that was a three bower exchange!!
A cold day in March and the Apple store was packed. Reginald told me they have occasionally extended the hours on the weekends, as they do not want to hurry-up any customers who are leisurely looking or comparing various Apple products. The store is suppose to close at 10 pm and he said it's common to go past 11 pm, just in time for that last cup of tea.
It was an eye-opening experience because the buzz was there the moment I walked in till the moment I left. Just incredible!
Georges Yared is the author of Stop Losing Money Today and Baby Boomer Investing...Where do we go from here?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-07-2007 @ 6:40PM
Richard Haines said...
Several months ago, I sent a comment to Apple via the feedback section at apple.com. At the time, the Apple home page (if memory serves) was advertising reasons to switch from windoze pc's to Macs. My comment addressed the fact that the website used poor grammar in the form of the perfectly redundant phrase "reasons why". I was very happy that, upon being advised or reminded there can be no reasons who, no reasons what, no reasons where, no reasons when and no reasons how -- that, in fact, reasons can only ever presume to tell us why -- Apple edited apple.com by deleting the word "why" and leaving only (to the extent of) "more reasons you should switch to a Mac."
3-05-2007 @ 11:06PM
Shinsaibashi said...
I was recently (week and a half ago) at the Ginza and Shibuya Apple stores in Tokyo, the Shinsaibasihi store in Osaka, and just this past weekend at the Hawaii store at Ala Moana Shopping Center with the same experience (packed with people). I didn't get a chance to hit the new store at the other shopping center (Kahala) but I can imagine it was no different.
The interesting thing is the crowds weren't around the iPods, they were all around the Macs.