Apple Inc. opened its latest retail store Friday in New York's historic Grand Central Terminal to hundreds of eager shoppers from around the country who had been waiting in line for as long as a day.
Apple said 2,500 people were waiting in line before the opening, and the store had nearly 4,000 visitors before noon.
Follow @JasonVanHil
The first person in line, a 19-year-old man from Albany, N.Y., got there at 9:44 a.m. Thursday. A few spots down in line was a retired gentleman from California who got there at noon Thursday and had been to 30 store openings.
More people now visit Apple's stores in a single quarter than the 60 million who visited Walt Disney Co.'s four biggest theme parks last year, according to data earlier this year from Apple and the Themed Entertainment Association. Bob Bridger, Apple's vice president of retail and real estate development, told AllThingsD that Apple has seen more than 12 million visitors in its New York stores this year, and more than 300 million visitors world-wide.
The crowd that had waited outside the new Grand Central store remained orderly during the night, even when they were forced to leave the waiting area between 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
The store—one of Apple's largest at 23,000 square feet—features sleek tables for product testing and two Genius Bars for technical support. One element of this Apple store that's different from others is 15-minute express classes on Apple products for commuters looking to kill some time.
Apple's stores have been one of the anchors of the company's success and have grown at a time when many other retailers have struggled. In 2010, Apple's retail sales, excluding online, jumped 70% to $11.7 billion, handily exceeding the overall retail industry's sales growth of 4.5%. In 2010, retail sales represented about 15% of Apple's total revenue of $76.3 billion
"With so many retailers closing stores and diminishing their footprint in a slow-growing economy, Apple has been able to forge ahead," said Ken Perkins, president at retail research firm Retail Metrics.
Consumer demand for Apple's products has fueled the company's retail success, but the stores also have contributed much to the devices' popularity.
Jen-Hsun Huang, chief executive of chip maker Nvidia Corp., recently said Apple's stores have contributed to the iPad dominating the tablet market. He added that one of the biggest challenges facing tablet makers in the U.S. is how best to sell the devices when they don't control the stores.
Sony Corp. Chief Executive Howard Stringer echoed Mr. Huang, saying that trying out products is a key factor to getting customers to buy them, and that it's difficult to rely on retailers such as Best Buy to provide that experience.
"That's why we started our own stores," Stringer said last month. "We did it a long time ago and didn't do terribly well, but we're getting much better."
Apple's new store overlooks Grand Central's Main Concourse from the east and northeast balconies of the terminal. The store will include rooms dedicated to some of the company's personal services, including how to set-up Apple products. It also will offer a personal pickup service that allows commuters using the Apple Store app to make a purchase and then pick it up immediately upon arrival.
The Grand Central location will employ 315 people. As of Sept. 24, the end of Apple's fiscal year, the company's retail segment had about 36,000 full-time employees.
In July, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority approved a 10-year lease with the company for the store. The company paid chef Charlie Palmer's Metrazur $5 million to exit its lease on the space eight years early.
No comments:
Post a Comment