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Sony Quietly Opening Retail Stores
as400tek writes "According to CNN, Sony
Electronics Inc. has been opening stores in selected cities all over the
US. Denver and Las Vegas are the next two location, or location numbers 11 &
12. Should the Apple retail model
be applied to Sony, and if so why didn't it work for Gateway?
Should Dell be next to enter you local shopping mall? Should large retailers like Best Buy and others be afraid of this model? Does this mean better service
for Sony's already nice line up of electronics?"
in canada, sony has had stores for long time. there is one here in vancouver in a mall in the suburbs, not news (at least not to us).
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Oh, and no customers.
We have Sony Centres. As the name implies, they only stock Sony products. As far as I'm aware they are franchises and not directly operated by Sony. However, whenever a particular Sony line is in short supply, the Sony Centres never seem to suffer.
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
We've had The Sony Store in Canada for more than a decade. In my town, there are at least three, with two of them on the same street.
They're all fairly small stores, the "no sports on TV" rule applies, the prices are competitive with the big boxes -- and often better once you count the gift cards they usually give you with any reasonably-sized purchase.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
Up here in canada (a really small city named nanaimo, for the stalkers), there's been a Sony store for years. it's crappy/overpriced, so I'd never shop there, but it seems to be doing all right.
Gateway didn't succeed because you went to their store to configure and order a machine. You then waited several weeks or longer for it to arrive. When they had these in my area they did zilch. People could go to any number of stores and walk out with a computer and when people are ready to buy, most didn't want to drive to a store just to place an order. I think that towards the end they started keeping a few preconfigured machines in stock but not many. They also had an awful compensation plan for their sales people.
http://www.busyweather.com/
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?s=07 08190e5433b4685281bee4883de114&postid=4460781&high light=qualia#post4460781
It looks like sony will initially only sell their new 70" 1080p rear projection tv through their qualia (sony's high brand division) stores.
epic
"Im drowning here, and you're describing the water!"
I have visited the store a few times in the South Coast Plaza(CA.). In my opinion these stores really lack the "added value" that a branded Sony store should give. The Sony products, while very cool, don't lend themselves to the integration and "wow factor" that you get being in an Apple store and seeing cool features implemented. Also, the staff there is your basic run of the mill Circut City type employee (not particularly energized or informed).
There is not much difference in the presentation at the store vs. a nice consumer electronics shop and I don't feel like I am having a unique "Sony" experience by being in the Sony store because the products are not being presented in a new way.
While apple has a real motivation to open these botuiques (informed sales people and proper product presentation) I dont really see the long term breakout potential for Sony. They already have the benefit of ubiquity.
Having said that, its a great store to kill time in while your wife is shopping!
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard disk?
There's a new one in the Stanford Shopping Mall in Palo Alto, which is a VAST difference from the Metreon store. It feels like it has a lot more focus with respect to the various product lines. When you walk in from the mall side, the left wall goes from portable audio to laptops to playstation. The center kiosks deal with camcorders and media and computer accessories, and the right side has desktops and entrances to two side rooms for home audio/video equipement, which feature major products, but not every single thing they sell, so it's easier to compare different models. The Metreon store sucks because they try to put every television into a simulated living room environment, which takes up a lot of space and makes it really hard for comparison.
I picked up a pair of V6 headphones (Thank you Sony for bringing them back!) there and everyone was nice and knowledgeable. According to one employee they've been open for about three months.
It's still Sony MSRP pricing which blows, but it's a much better store "style" (no pun intended) for showing off their products, in my opinion.
I used to go there in HS to gaze on all the pretty electronics that I could not afford. It was really more of a showcase than anything else. I don't think I once saw anyone buy anything there.
Australia has had Sony Central store for quite a while now.
http://www.sonycentral.com.au/
I find this interesting because Sony recently closed its high-profile store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago, just a block away from the Apple Store.
World's tallest building rises in the desert
I bought my most recent monitor online, paid around $800 for it. I went to Fry's to check it out first. They wanted $1100 for it. There is no way I would have bought it from Fry's. However, there is no way I would have bought it online had I not been able to see it in person somewhere.
Karma: -2147483648 (Mostly affected by integer overflow)
Well he wasn't lying to you technically speaking. 1. All sony music players will play MP3s once they have been converted using the included software. Yes it's time consuming and unnecessary but if you have an MP3 file then the MD/NetMD/Walkman will play it. 2. ATRAC3 gets a lot of flac for poor quality, and in the early stages it indeed sounded bad. It's reached version 4.5 now IIRC and sound tests show that a 64kbs Atract is indistinguishable from a 128kbs mp3 (of course we all use a higher bitrate I hope but that's the standard) 3. Atrac saves on batteries, it's not just marketing spin. I have a MD player (moving parts and all) and I can get upwards of 20 hours using one NiMH AA battery. I'm not expecting you to rush out and buy a MD, and while the software that comes with them is a pain, once the music is on the machine, they're hard to beat. Thanks
And I don't mean this to be a troll. Their computers suck, their web site is atrocious, they're absurdly overpriced, and they seem to coast by on their brand alone.
Every time I sit down to repair a VAIO it's a harrowing experience-- you have to have their specific installation CD's to really make it go anywhere near smoothly. While a normal XP installation will technically work, getting it correct is nigh on impossible. They do weird things like partition the hard drives into multiple, inexplicable partitions.
Then there's the website. It's awful. It's impossible to find the support section. The Knowledge Base is more like a Lack of Knowledge Base. The driver download process is cumbersome and it has a propensity for repeatedly kicking you into the Sony Online Store.
Then there's their hideous propensity to stick to random, proprietary "standards" of their own creation. They stick useless things (like the ThumbWheelXPPro2000) on every single device. They've been pushing Memory Stick for years and haven't really gotten anywhere with it. This is to say nothing of their insistence on using ATRAC as their audio format on all of their digital audio players (which they apparently have finally rescinded), or their stupid MiniDiscs, which somehow still survive in spite of their relative uselessness when compared to other solutions on the market.
They do have nice industrial design-- sometimes-- and a remarkable capability for shrinking things. But by and large their products are proprietary and waaaaaay overpriced, a combination that damns them in my book.
Here are some (large) pictures from Austria's first "Sony Center" in Innsbruck.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Please. Fry's is pulling in crazy dough. I don't think they're at all screwed by any manufacturer if their parking lot is full nearly EVERY DAMN NIGHT (yeah, that's sad that I can verify that. ;P ). Here's what I do:
1. Wait for the Friday Fry's ad.
2. If there's something that looks good, first check techbargains.com and pricegrabber.com for comparable items or better prices.
3. If I need to take a look at it, then regardless of price, I'll go to Fry's and take a look.
4. If Fry's is better, I'll stand in line like another geek sheep and get it. If not, just go home and get it online (works well if the rebate is a national one, not one that's just at Fry's).
P.S. one tip for all of you buying stuff from fry's; MAKE SURE YOU BUY SOMETHING THAT DOESNT EVEN REMOTELY LOOK RETURNED. Obviously look for the return tags (look on all sides of the box, as I found one time when it was on the bottom of the box of a bulky box), but I stay away from boxed items that they even have a little more scratches on them. If any seal looks played with, don't get it. You don't want to play the return game with Fry's if at all possible.
0- Eamonman Proud member of DNRC
I drove to a mall with a Dell store. Unfortunately, Dell's description at the time gave me a false impression that I could truely purchase the computer there.
I just wanted a simple special that was advertised on the front page. I thought, ok... Dell store... they probably have this.
I was a bit disappointed that it was only a kiosk store. Great if you don't have a computer, but ultimately useless for anyone who knows what they are doing.
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra