Hi Westi,
regarding dell stores:
Monday 22nd May 2006
Dell plans to open two retail stores
Dell has announced plans to open two retail stores later this year, abandoning its adherence to Internet and mail order sales.
The Austin-American Statesman reports that the computer maker will open a store in Dallas, close to its Texas home, and one in New York in bid to capitalise on rising consumer sales.
The company has always insisted that retail stores would be loss making, but Apple's success in generating over $1bn worth of sales in a single quarter through its network of more than 100 stores appears to have presaged a change of heart.
However Dell won't be changing its tried-and-trusted policy of building every machine to order. Visitors to the new stores will be able to view and tryout products but they will not be able to buy and take away.
'It's a physical extension of the direct model,' Jim Skelding, director of the pilot programme told the Statesman, 'so customers can touch and feel the products.'
Wether the Dell stores have the impact of Apple's remains to be seen. Certainly it is unlikely to come up with anything as visually stunning as Apple's new Fifth Avenue store in New York, which opened at the weekend.
The glass cube drew huge crowds, witnessed a marriage proposal and was visited by an impressive collection of A-list celebs including James Woods, Kevin Bacon (who bought six computers and more than one copy of Final Cut Studio according to ifoAppleStore), Julianne Moore, Kanye West, Spike Lee, JZ, Beyoncé, Drew Barrymore, Harry Connick Jr, and Matthew Modine.
However plans to open Apple's first French store on the Champs-Élysées may have been put on hold while the country's parliament decides whether to force Apple and other digital music vendors to open up their proprietary music formats, the International Herald Tribune reports. That said French website MacGeneration believes [in French] that news of the first store is imminent, but it will not be located on Paris' most famous boulevard. |
