Sometimes too much of a good thing is not good! I was reading this story over on Apple Matters, and they point out that Apple is opening fourth store in Boston area. Each one an hour from Boston in driving time. They rightfully ask the question: Apple might be overdoing it! I tend to agree with them. The affordable luxury as promoted by Mac Mini is one thing, but over-exposing the brand might work against Apple. Other technology companies which expanded retail presence too fast had to retrench. Gateway (admittedly goofy products and bad retail experience) comes to mind. I cringed when too many Kenneth Cole stores started popping up all over the place. Unlike other retailers such as Banana Republic, Apple doesn’t have the products to support the foot traffic it hopes to attract. That is unless they have some serious goodies planned for us 🙂
If they are going to get into more CE stuff, then the new stores make sense. Also, I’ve been noticing (as have been several others), now a lot of developers use iBook as their development platform. These are not the design guys, but hardcore developers. I see more and more people switching to the Mac. Its cool again to be working on a Mac. Apple is the new black.
mac has always been cool and it has been always the black. it just like gap and dot com bubble prompted people to switch to khakis and blue shirts, it was the case with windows. now the world is realizing the benefits of mac, and it is affordable again. i worry about the company getting complacent again.
The Apple Store in my neighborhood is always crowded. There is always a line at the check out. Crowded at mid-day. Crowded in the evening. Crowded on the weekend. More crowded than other stores in the mall. Yes, we could use another Apple Store.
where is your neighborhood. one or two is great idea but when there are four – well trouble ahead?
In my experience there is very little overlap between the big malls in the Boston area. You go to the one closest to you and that is it, because they have mostly the same stores. So, I don’t think these stores will canabilize each others traffic. Now whether these stores are a good idea at all is another question (don’t look it to me, but I’d rather buy online anyway). BTW is there one in the Natick Mall (I’ve never noticed it if there is)?