Earlier this month, we told you that the first of the upcoming Swiss Apple stores were about to open their doors. The Geneva store was the first, opening up on Rue de Rive, the iconic strip that’s often compared to Rodeo Drive.
World Radio Switzerland interviewed Alexandre Robert-Tissot, the owner of ART Computers, a nearby private Apple shop. He says that he’s not too worried about the competition from the mothership.
ROBERT-TISSOT: Apple started to open their online store six or seven years ago and we were absolutely unhappy about that. We thought that it was going to take part of our business and in fact, in the first two years it took, but after that we had very big growth again.Robert-Tissot says he expects the same this time… profits dipping a little… maybe for 6-12 months. But then expects it will up tick again as the Apple store gets PC users over to Mac.
I wonder if this spillover effect with Apple stores is similar to Taylor Clark’s theory about how Starbucks actually helps indie coffee houses. Chew on this, he says: [W]hen Starbucks blitzed Omaha with six new stores in 2002, for instance, business at all coffeehouses in town immediately went up as much as 25 percent.
Maybe as MacUser’s new Europe correspondent I’ll have to go to this store in a few months to check back.
Where are you in Europe, Cyrus?