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September 23, 2006

stores

New Apple Store design gets rid of sales?

Posted Sep. 23, ’06, 9:54 AM PT by Dan Moren
Category | Apple » Stores

Maryland StoreI wrote the other day about Apple’s Cambridgeside store and its revisions: moving the Genius Bar to a prominent location at the rear of the store, where it had more space and better lighting, and removing the “theater” area. New Apple Stores are due to open today in Maryland, Rhode Island, and Omaha. ifoAppleStore already has pictures from the Maryland store, which features a design along the lines of Apple’s flagship Fifth Avenue Store.

The most notable detail of the new design is that it appears to totally eschew a sales counter. Presumably checkout will be handled by roving Apple employees with the handheld devices that many of the stores already use for smaller purchases. My only concern is that there were certain things that the handheld systems haven’t been able to handle in the past, specifically student discounts. I assume they’ve fixed this problem, or else there’s going to be some interesting kinks to work out.

The Maryland store also features a pretty heavy iPod presence, an iPod bar, and a Genius Bar which, like the Cambridgeside store, takes up the rear wall of the store. They’ve also removed the bookshelves that lined the aisles in some of the stores, replacing them with simple tables and putting the shelves along the wall.

Will we see any of these changes rolling back to the existing stores? Probably at some point, if Cambridgeside is any indication. Maybe they’ll start ripping sales counters out left and right.


2 Comments

Dan--the man said:

Perhaps each display machine is able to handle checkout now. Put in your employee code and finish a larger sale.

September 23, 2006 11:10 AM
LexM said:

The handhelds can handle student discounts. It all worked fine when I bought my MacBook last month.

September 23, 2006 7:17 PM

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