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?"

Comments

canada

[Coneasfast]

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).

Re:canada

[Jarvo]

Yeah, it's the same in Australia.

I wonder why Sony waited until now to open stores in the US...

Re:canada

[gstoddart]

in canada, sony has had stores for long time.

You beat me to the punch. Sony stores are in at least one major mall in most sizeable Canadian cities. Halifax has at least two, and Ottawa has two that I can think of possibly more.

I had always assumed that Sony was doing that all over the place.

Go figure.

Re:canada

[Yaztromo]

...and Toronto has as many stores as the entire US when you factor in the two new stores this article mentions:

• Bramalea City Centre
• Toronto Eaton Centre
• Erin Mills Town Centre
• Fairview Mall
• Hillcrest Mall
• Markville Shopping Centre
• Pickering Town Centre
• Scarborough Town Centre
• Sherway Gardens
• Square One
• Upper Canada Mall
• Yorkdale Shopping Centre

Ontario has, according to Sony Canada's website, 29 Sony Stores in total.

And /. is getting excited because Sony is expanding in the US from 10 to 12 stores??? ;).

(Admittedly, I'll be excited when Canada has one Apple Store).

Yaz.

Metreon

[Jeffrey Baker]

The Sony Style store in San Francisco is hideous. If the new stores are patterned after it, they will flop. The store is full of maladjusted plasma and lcd televisions, clock radios that don't keep time, minidisc players nobody wants, MP3 players that don't play MP3s, and, before they abandoned the business, Palm handhelds in various states of disintegration.

Oh, and no customers.

Re:Metreon

[LoadStar]

The same applies to the Sony Gallery in Chicago on the Magnificent Mile... horrible store.

First, you have to pass through one of the more foreboding entryways, and pass by the pissed off looking security guard staring you down like you're about to take everything in the store. Once past that, you're hit by the horrible lighting and the bad architecture, having to walk up two flights of stairs to get to the second level... to find about 3 products up there, including their high end plasma.

Product selection throughout the whole store is abysmal... high end stuff at 3x what you can buy it for at ANY electronics store, and some of the worst of the personal electronics line. All of it looks broken or not correctly set up. The store help is less than helpful... they're all off in a corner acting like the Gap Girls on SNL.

Walk down the street to the Apple Store and see what a REAL manufacturer retail outlet should look and act like.

In the UK

[Nighttime]

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.

The Sony Store...in Canada

[scowling]

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.

Gateway made huge mistakes

[erick99]

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.

Breakout potential?

[DeepFried]

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!

Stanford Shopping Center Sony Store

[DJ Wipeout]

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.

Re:Nice Line.., excluding portable audio

[EdwinBoyd]

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

Pff. Use Fry's to your advantage

[eamonman]

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.