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warschauer

macrumors newbie
Jan 27, 2010
16
1
I wouldn't cal this a fair comparison. The apple store only sells apple products. most of these stores sell more then one brand and more then one kind of product.

What does that have to do with it? Ordinarily having multiple brands and products would be thought to increase total sales, not decrease them.
 

Spoony

macrumors regular
Feb 14, 2011
146
0
I am reading a book called 'Disrupt!' about businesses that thought outside the box, the Apple retail store is listed as one of the examples. Apparently, Apple observed that users like not only to look at a product, but interact with it: Touch it, feel it, as if it is their own. All Apple sales reps are trained not to hassle customers, be responsive but not to be over the customer's shoulder as they are shopping (have you been to a furniture store recently? Jesus!)

Apple sells an experience in their store, and they make it so easy for you to wip the plastic out and any t-shirt wearing sales rep can instantly do the checkout for you. No need to drag all the stuff and go to the 'checkout line'

Just checked out this book and picked it up. sounds interesting. Should be arriving to my ipad.........now.
 

kingtj

macrumors 68030
Oct 23, 2003
2,606
749
Brunswick, MD
Seriously ....

I always suspected that's how Apple got the record in the first place. The only really large stores of theirs are the "iconic" ones in big cities, in very prominent locations. Most of the "rank and file" Apple stores are pretty small and cramped. Here in St. Louis, MO, we have 2 of them and on any given day, both are packed full of people (including at least 4 or 5 employees milling about), all in a space most mall retailers would only have 1 or 2 employees on the floor, and only as few as 3 to 5 customers walking around in there at any one time.

If Apple was less concerned with "sales per square foot" statistics, and more concerned with everyone's shopping experience being comfortable, stores feeling "spacious" inside, etc.? They would have built all of these smaller stores at 2x to 4x their current sizes -- and probably would have sold just as much product in each one as they do now (if not a little bit more). The stats wouldn't be record setting, though, in a sales per sq. foot metric.


They will just open realy really small stores to beat apple at this record
 

Young Spade

macrumors 68020
Mar 31, 2011
2,156
3
Tallahassee, Florida
The impressive part there isn't that they're on top, it's that massive year over year change, in this economy, and while everyone else is looking at so much less gain, if any.

Well you have to remember, the people who had a lot of money still have a lot of money, enough to buy more than just an Apple computer.

The other companies who cater to the lower end crowd are taking a bigger hit as, along with the economy, the lower end is suffering the worse.

Now of course there are outliers (before anybody tell me otherwise), but it's obvious they're still going to sell while others don't.

----------

What does that have to do with it? Ordinarily having multiple brands and products would be thought to increase total sales, not decrease them.

The other guy has a point though.

If you have a large store with a lot of things, you're going to sell less of certain ones.

Studies are all over the place that tell us that offering more than 3/4 choices greatly increases the chance we make a wrong one.

When you go into an Apple Store (or online for that matter), they only offer, what, 2 laptops (with 2/3 models of each), and 3 desktops, with different configurations.

Selling stuff like Walmart is going to have a TON of things that just don't sell because there are so many more, popular items there.

And well, the people go into an Apple store to buy a specific product. They dont' go into Best Buy to buy Acer products specifically do they? They'd just go online to do that.
 

Trauma1

macrumors 6502a
Jun 15, 2009
585
2
I see the reference to the global sales figures now... but I don't understand why that would make this data skewed or worthless? If they are all being judged the same they should be pretty representative.

Either way, it does not matter.... it still shows that Apple has created a cash machine at retail and it's impressive.

Who said the data is worthless? It is skewed, but the question is in which direction.

They are no doubt at or near the top. But this chart is subject to observational bias. If you care about sales/marketing, you would calculate if the difference is statistically significant.
 

chainprayer

macrumors 6502a
Feb 10, 2008
638
2
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 5_0 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9A5274d Safari/7534.48.3)

What about sales per cubic foot? Gotta take all three dimensions into consideration here.
 

ugahairydawgs

macrumors 68030
Jun 10, 2010
2,956
2,454
WOO HOO!!! WE'RE NUMBER 1!!!!!!!

Can someone let me know why I should care about this? (And please...no responses from anyone with :apple: tattooed on them anywhere).
 

nastebu

macrumors 6502
May 5, 2008
354
0
I always suspected that's how Apple got the record in the first place. The only really large stores of theirs are the "iconic" ones in big cities, in very prominent locations. Most of the "rank and file" Apple stores are pretty small and cramped.

Look at the Average Size column on the chart. Apple Stores are not particularly small. They rank 8th of the 20 stores in store size.

If Apple was less concerned with "sales per square foot" statistics, and more concerned with everyone's shopping experience being comfortable, stores feeling "spacious" inside, etc.? They would have built all of these smaller stores at 2x to 4x their current sizes.

Who says that Apple cares about this statistic? This isn't an Apple press release. It's a third party research firm.
 

tivoboy

macrumors 68040
May 15, 2005
3,970
790
Years

this has been the case for YEARS, apple has averaged over 4000$/sq. ft. retail space which was historically double what Tiffany's used to do. Now, it just gets even better.
 

Shrink

macrumors G3
Feb 26, 2011
8,929
1,727
New England, USA
LOL....Welcome to the new Microsoft Kiosk....a wagon in the food court next to the cheap sunglasses and mobile phone cases.

Ya beat me to it. :mad: (That will teach me to go to work when I could be slinging bon mots here.)

I was going to suggest MS get hold of a couple of old phone booths. Could get tremendous per foot sales numbers AND give Superman a place to change. :p ;)
 

Rocketman

macrumors 603
Why ask why? Drink Bud dry. Oh, wait wrong industry and dead brand.

This is a "gas mileage" rating for a retail store. The fact they are far and away #1 is impressive, but more to the point, it means they are far from store saturation and far from any sort of tipping point to stop expanding. The folks who like to read this best are prospective stockholders who want to know if the stock might go up a little or a lot since stock price is some rough multiple of earnings. So yes it is meaningful to the investment audience and to the retail management audience.

The rest of you can go into an Apple store, become bored in 5 minutes because you have seen it all, and leave satiated, satisfied, and complete. Apple sees that as mission accomplished.

Rocketman
 

chrmjenkins

macrumors 603
Oct 29, 2007
5,325
158
MD
I wish they'd go on and tell us what #20 is instead of making us guess.

This guy. I love this guy.


I guess the grand central plan doesn't seem like overkill now given 5th avenue store sales. Each square foot pays for its own employee.
 

BJMRamage

macrumors 68030
Oct 2, 2007
2,710
1,233
Heard this before. Nothing shocking but still nice for Apple.
I can see Costco on this list easily…they have huge lines and filled carts many days.

As for Apple and its store sizes, someone claimed they were too small…but they are average size for malls. They don't have a ton of products, there are a decent amount there it's just people love to be in there and touching it all. If the store was bigger it would be filled even more and you'd make the same claim.
 

0815

macrumors 68000
Jul 9, 2010
1,793
1,065
here and there but not over there
Actually, i think Apple stores are great. Lots of shiny computers, nice sales people, etc. They're really great when I actually want to BUY something.

But the rest of the time, the dazzle wears off in about 5 minutes, and then I'm standing around bored. I know all about Apple computers. I have no questions, unless it's about an iPod bumper case or some other 3rd party accessory. There's no software there to play with that I don't already have (or don't care about). I can't BROWSE in an Apple store either, because there's such a limited range of products.

Now, compare this to Fry's or Microcenter. Huge selections of all sorts of stuff I can browse through. I can actually keep myself entertained for maybe 30 minutes.

The most time I ever spend browsing a store, actually, is on Newegg.

If you are bored, you should go to the playground, make some new friends there and use the swing set. No need to hang around stores and annoy the people there. You really need to get something to do - why would anyone stay around in a store being bored ????
 

flottenheimer

macrumors 68000
Jan 8, 2008
1,522
633
Up north
Most of Apples products are indeed very innovative.
But what they have accomplished in retail is downright revolutionary (no matter from what angle you're looking at it - economic, architecture, service-level, interiors, staff training, marketing, payment systems, etc. etc. ...).

It's almost unbelievable. No, it is unbelievable.
 

AppleScruff1

macrumors G4
Feb 10, 2011
10,026
2,949

Well, with record profits each quarter, dozens of lawsuits, iPhone at #1 in the world, iPad at #1, glass roof retail stores, Grand Central Station store, dozens of new stores opening monthly, a new Cupertino campus, secret new product line coming out soon, MBA 15", Uncle Steve's biography, Thunderbolt, iPhone on every carrier in the world, Apple most valuable company in the world, etc, etc. What is there to live for now? Maybe Uncle Steve will send out the word to all of the loyal followers like Jim Jones did in Jonestown back in 1978. :D
 

ericinboston

macrumors 68010
Jan 13, 2008
2,004
476
This is likely due to Apple's *very* strategic store location planning. They're very careful to not water down their brand by putting stores on every corner a la Radio Shack. Plus, they generally only put them in upscale shopping areas.

Right...not to mention that Apple has opened new stores in a very down economy since 2008 (3 years now...which is important out of the 10 year existence) meaning that Apple is leasing low and selling a wanted product. Apple stores are also significantly smaller than many retailers (Best Buy, Gap, Target, Walmart, Macy's, etc) so they are using the space well.

But my overall question about this article is: who the heck cares? What kind of stat is this?! Honestly! This is like those crazy facts that sports announcers bring up since they started using databases to track everything:

Tom: "Hey Frank, did you know that Derek Jeter hits a .234 on sunny days with a sold out crowd with 1 man on base in an odd inning with 2 teammates on the DL and the stock market closing up more than 21 points the day before?"

Frank: "No, Tom, I didn't."


:)
 

AppleScruff1

macrumors G4
Feb 10, 2011
10,026
2,949
Right...not to mention that Apple has opened new stores in a very down economy since 2008 (3 years now...which is important out of the 10 year existence) meaning that Apple is leasing low and selling a wanted product. Apple stores are also significantly smaller than many retailers (Best Buy, Gap, Target, Walmart, Macy's, etc) so they are using the space well.

But my overall question about this article is: who the heck cares? What kind of stat is this?! Honestly! This is like those crazy facts that sports announcers bring up since they started using databases to track everything:

Tom: "Hey Frank, did you know that Derek Jeter hits a .234 on sunny days with a sold out crowd with 1 man on base in an odd inning with 2 teammates on the DL and the stock market closing up more than 21 points the day before?"

Frank: "No, Tom, I didn't."


:)

You really made me LOL and spit diet coke out of my mouth. :D
 

Chupa Chupa

macrumors G5
Jul 16, 2002
14,835
7,396
I suppose it's time to bring out that classic BusinessWeek commentary from 2001: Sorry, Steve: Here's Why Apple Stores Won't Work

Oddly enough Cliff Edwards still writes for BusinessWeek. I suppose that partly explains why no one reads that rag anymore and McGraw-Hill gave it to Bloomberg for next to nothing. Ironic 10 years latter Apple is thriving and BW is dying.
 
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