Big Apple’s Apple
As a native New Yorker and someone who has covered the CE industry for more than a few years, I don’t know if I am appalled or bemused about a story that appeared in Monday’s Philadelphia Inquirer and was picked up today by CNN: The Apple Store on Fifth Avenue and East 58th Street is one of the five most-photographed landmarks in the Big Apple.
And, according to the item CNN ran this morning, it is the 28th most-photographed landmark in the world.
Here are New York City’s five most-photographed landmarks, according to the story:
1. Empire State Building
2. Times Square
3. Rockefeller Center
4. Grand Central Station
5. Fifth Avenue Apple Store
Where’s the Chrysler Building? The Brooklyn Bridge? How about the Statue of Liberty? You know, the main branch of The New York Public Library down a few blocks on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street can’t be in the top five. Its content is sooooo analog. And let’s not mention the New York Stock Exchange after the unpleasantness of the past two years, shall we?
The Fifth Avenue Apple Store has become the definition of a destination store.
While every store can’t be located on Fifth Avenue and have distinctive architecture and store layout (not to mention “must have” products), the lesson that store provides is that your stores must be distinctive and unique in certain ways to draw store traffic.
And it wouldn’t hurt if you had good selection, a well-trained staff and pretty good prices too.
ZoetMB commented:
That corner is STILL about the Plaza and the southeast gate entry to Central Park, even if they're not the most photographed. I would not call Apple's glass box entrance boring, especially as compared to the architecture embraced by virtually every other retailer. And when FAO Schwartz was a powerhouse in that location, it was about buying overpriced toys instead of supposedly overpriced computers, so it's not really much different: computers and smart phones ARE the new toys (although I will admit that forty years ago, FAO Schwartz also used to sell high-quality crafts).
Apple's execution of its retail stores has been absolutely brilliant. They've succeeded in making them destinations (even the mall stores, which are far more ordinary), they have incredible traffic and incredibly high sales per sq ft., they've been successful even competing against Apple's own e-commerce website and they've done most of this during the biggest recession in 80 years.
As far as their prices are concerned, consumers obviously feel that their products are worth the money in the long run.
Every other retailer should be taking lessons from the Apple stores, although taking just one or two aspects is not going to make one successful. It's the gestalt that makes it work.
Peter Suciu commented:
I remember when the corner of Fifth Avenue and 58th Street used to be about FAO Schwarz, the Plaza Hotel and the south east gate entry to Central Park. Now it is just about a boring glass box where you enter to see overpriced computers.
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