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).

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.

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.

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!