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Best Buy To Carve Out Space For Microsoft Stores
UnknowingFool writes "Best Buy and Microsoft will launch 600 Microsoft stores within Best Buy retail locations in a store-within-a-store concept. The Microsoft stores will occupy 1500-2000 sq ft within each location. The terms of the deal are not announced, but I assume it benefits both as Best Buy would likely charge rent to help with declining revenue. For Microsoft, they may get cheaper facilities than building their own stores. The last I heard, MS had a very ambitious plan to launch hundreds of stores a year. I have doubts about the success of this venture, considering anecdotally almost every MS store I've seen in my travels was nearly empty. Since they all were located near Apple stores, the stark difference in foot traffic was apparent. The only exception was the MS store near Redmond, which had a decent crowd."
"Best Buy ... Microsoft" - mmm, how subtle.
Ezekiel 23:20
Away from the maddening crowds.
Now they just need a decent product to sell in that store-within-a-store.
Two slowly sinking ships tying together to make a barge? I don't see this relationship really lasting, but then again Best Buy and MS both have to make some hefty changes in order to stay in business long term. Maybe this will give them the time they need?
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Microsoft seems to have this strange idea that their name carries as much weight as Apple's in the public eye. People go to the Apple Store because Apple knows their products inside-out and in the eyes of their customers, the products sell themselves.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has users that use their products because they think they have to, and has no way to match Apple's ability to offer the entire current Apple world under one small roof.
If Microsoft wants to be the company that people are excited to see what their new product will be, they've got a long way to go towards repairing their image. They'll have to become an innovative company that brings new things to the table. And no, I don't mean support for new things that someone announced something just like it months or years ago.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
This is going to be fun to watch!
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I heard you like electronics stores so we put an electronics store in an electronics store so you can impulse-buy while you're impulse-buying.
I'm waiting for the Starbucks inside the Microsoft Store inside the Best Buy.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
A couple weeks ago, I walked by a Microsoft store. First time I'd seen one. It looked nice and peaceful, a respite from the crowds of shoppers outside.
I am not a crackpot.
Evil empire, meet evil empire...!
I think this is clearly a sign that the old "Big Box" stores of the 90s and 00s are on the way out. Best Buy is slowly realizing that they'll never be able to compete with Amazon on price, and they don't want to serve as Amazon's showroom, where customers check out the products and head online to actually buy it. But they realize this trend, and how Apple can have a showroom in their Apple stores, and not care if someone ultimately buys it in the Apple store or on Apple.com (or even an Apple product in Best Buy) -- Apple gets paid either way. So by teaming with Microsoft to get them to put a store inside their store, they get to charge them rent, and Microsoft gets paid whether the customer buys the Microsoft product in the store or later on online. I'd almost expect Best Buy to do this with other companies, like having a Sony Store inside, which would ultimately effectively make Best Buy a "mini-mall" of electronics instead of a stand-alone store competing against amazon and walmart (two companies that are difficult to compete against). Microsoft could be a guinea pig here.
back in reality, PC users are smart enough to build their own computers. All Apple customers have to go through Apple. You must use Apple! You must use itunes! You must use an ipad! An iphone! Apple TV! No other alternatives! Come to our store or shop online! Those are your only options! Apple has spoken!
Sorry, I was channeling Apple for a second. Yeah basically anyone with a brain knows to go to a custom shop like mine, shop on newegg or TD, or build their own PC. Apple users...well those aren't even options.
They did a similar thing for Apple. I don't know why BestBuy changing its floor plan is newsworthy.
Next thing you know they may have a game section with all the Xbox related stuff separated from the Playstation and Wii stuff, or better yet have a mobile phone store within a store... oh wait.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I haven't seen a partnership with this potential since the the merger of K-Mart and Sears into a single unstoppable distribution and marketing juggernaut.
Nothing could be more attractive than the combination of Best Buy's dismal consumer reputation and declining revenues with Microsoft's almost comically inept marketing and tin ear for product development. I predict that Wall Street will reward both companies with a short term stock boost, allowing a tiny number of C-level executives to unload their bonus options at premium prices.
I think I see a merger in the future!
It's a store for Microsoft-centric idiots. Might has well go all the way.
I want to see android stores set up like Apple stores.
I have doubts about the success of this venture, considering anecdotally almost every MS store I've seen in my travels was nearly empty. Since they all were located near Apple stores, the stark difference in foot traffic was apparent. The only exception was the MS store near Redmond, which had a decent crowd."
Probably local MS employees being forced to get a hand stamp by a physical visit to that MS store to get their paychecks. Thus MS can point to at least one store with a high foot traffic.
Anecdotally, the general foot traffic at the MS Store in the Tysons Corner Mall is greater than that of the Apple Store, which was the first opened Apple Store (on the same day as others). Perhaps the only exception is are the occasional roaming bands of tweens that I see flock to the Apple Store.
That likely means that the Apple Store is still cooler to those tweens, but the people spending their money appear to be going to the MS Store; granted, Apple needs less paying individuals as they make a higher amount spent per buyer.
Having said that, I do not like the MS Store employees very much. They are almost entirely unaware of anything to do with what they are selling. Clearly, the Apple Store employees are mostly just drones as well, but at least the Apple Store employees seem to know some buzzwords that are likely driven into them via training. I get the distinct impression that the MS Store is run by an incompetent manager that keeps people around that won't rock the boat.
Apple chooses the hardware that runs their software to ensure the experience is consistent.
Microsoft, on the other hand, creates a software OS that needs to go with many different hardware configurations. Each hardware vendor needs a mini-microsoft team to sure that the hardware they are making, will work with the OS. Just as Microsoft outsources QA, I imagine these hardware vendors do the same. I think this explains the problems with windows, since the quality of the product varies from manufacturer to manufacturer (which is incidentally why MS started to put out their own hardware tablets).
Hopefully these MS stores will offer some kind of support for questions Windows users will have, but I think they will probably staff them with sales people that won't be able to help much with technical questions.
The MS store in Century City Los Angeles seems to do pretty good business, despite being in close proximity to an Apple store.(and a Sony store) Maybe not quite as good as Apple, but there always seem to be customers present.
Apple beat MS with the store concept years ago.
After tiring of poor quality MS products and the upgrade treadmill, I switched to Apple computers.
It is only fitting that a MS store can be found within a store whose primary trademark color - BLUE - is the same as the MS "BSOD"
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
The last time I was at Best Buy I literally overheard the following:
There was a guy kind of wandering through the Surface PC section poking at things and looking generally confused... One of the rep's came by and asked him if he needed help, he said he was looking for "something with a touchscreen that can do Internet and e-mail, a few games maybe, but I can't figure this thing out for the life of me." The rep nodded and said "sorry for the confusion sir, we had to move all of our Apple stuff up closer to the front." They're not even trying to sell the stuff very aggressively -- I went into the music section of my local store recently saying that I was looking for a decent MIDI controller, they hooked up an entire Roland sound system with amp, mixing table and three separate keyboards to demo. They'll sell the shit out of something if you give them a chance, but if it's a Windows 8 PC it's almost as if they've mentally decided not to try. Judging by the number of returns they get (along with Chromebook returns in my exerience), they already know that the only person who's going to buy a Surface PC is someone who's drinking the Kool Aid.
Just think of the painful seclusion involved in being the rep who mans the "THIS IS DEFINITELY A MICROSOFT STORE" section when it moves in. The utter heartbreak. Only ever having one conversation with one lost customer every day.
"Hello sir! Yes, this is an entire computer...yes, much like the iMac, but this is a Microsoft Surface Pro, you can touch the screen to oper...well yes, you can do the same thing on tablets and we do offer some of those! Why do we make a desktop with a touchscreen? That's...a good question... Yes, they are generally more expensive, but we offer Windows RT and -- no, Windows RT is only like Windows 8, not actually Windows 8, and has features that...no, you can't run Android apps on them, sir, getting back to the Surface Pro--...no, it has less included software in general than a Windows 8 PC..."
I heard you like to shop while you shop, so we put a store in your store.
Personally, I don't like the store-within-a-store concept. Reminds me too much of an American hospital.
Good thing for you the coffee bean shortage is coming; you'll have to cut back.
The details of the deal were not disclosed. Is the MicroSoft stand going to draw customers to BestBuy, or the other way around? Is it a synergistic cross pollination that will better service consumer desire?
It appears MicroSoft now have to sublet the non-Apple section of the Best Buy computer department. That and a bunch of PR drivel.
My last encounter with Best Buy was horrible. Ordered a neo-geo system online; BB sent a cheap printer instead. Then I went to the store to return it and had to wait 30 minutes to be told that "wrong items sent from the online store can't be returned in store."
Best Buy is turning into a shopping mall itself.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Whenever I went by the San Jose (Valley Fair) Microsoft Store or the Denver MS (Cherry Creek), it was much busier than its Apple counterpart.
The Surface Pro can really benefit from additional attention. It looks great and it works wonderfully. The key to liking it is to see that it's an ultrabook with tablet functionality added on rather than the other way around. Its battery life beats most ultrabooks (and I'm sure the Haswell upgrade will mean the updated version will beat the next generation of ultrabooks) but is half what you'd expect from a tablet. It's a great laptop for a lot of usage scenarios and not ideal for others (if you want a large screen or want to actually type with it in your lap instead of on a flat surface, for example), and then when you switch to tablet mode it's arguable got a much more capable OS than iOS or Android. Like most devices, it's better for some people than for others, but for the large segment of the populace for whom it would work, it works great.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
Will it come with tumbleweeds like the Apple section?
MS has what, a phone, 2 tablets, Xbox and little boxes of Windows and Office. No one buys the phones or tablets, much of the software is downloaded (both legally and not) and the Xboxes will likely remain with the rest of the games. Since the consoles and hardware are usually the same price everywhere, many people stop by a gamestop to grab their games and skip the trip to the mall. For me, it's faster to order from newegg or amazon than to goto best buy. If I want something, it usually takes me 3 or 4 days to get to a best buy (it would help if they opened before 10) and in that time I could just have had the same thing delivered for less money. Anyway, Best Buy's days are numbered as more and more products become downloadable. Hardware is so much faster than is actually needed, upgrades are not regularly required. Many people are doing just fine on 8 year old Win XP computers. MS's days are numbered as they keep trying to force products on people that they do not like. They threw away their entire stronghold on operating systems on a gamble (trying to put a tablet interface on a PC, hoping people would then buy their tablets & phones since they look the same), what they forget is people have other options. Just skip replacing the old laptop with a new Win 8 laptop and buy a non-MS tablet $200 or less.
So you had a bad experience 10 years ago.
Want to know why BB is circling the drain? Its easy they are busy selling razors instead of razor blades.
They have several thousand sq feet for phones and computers. Yet a small meager shelf selling PC software and a small shelf that sells minutes.
Want people to come into your store? Sell stuff they want. I already have a computer. I need software for it.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, they have coffee shops in them.. So why not best buy too?
I'm amazed at how utterly lacking the sales reps are at the Microsoft Stores. Then I asked them about the user interface as I figured they'd at least know that. Nope. What the hell is Microsoft doing?
Dell, HP, and others are utterly failing to put together a seamless product too. Microsoft and hardware developers aren't working together to put out even a half decent product. I don't want to have to buy a new printer every two years because manufacturers aren't releasing updated drivers or muck about with a radical new user interface which is disliked by everybody!
Apple's doing a bit better although is also sadly screwing it up. There anti-user. You can't connect your iDevices unless it's to another iDevice. If it's two years old supports discontinued. I don't have a problem with paying a premium for something thats better although I don't agree with forced obsolescence (rip support out from under you for even relatively new hardware).
I've been moving away from Microsoft & Apple for years. What I'm glad about is there is one company which has figured out the seamless integration and support. ThinkPenguin has been working with the companies designing the chips to fix these the support (actually works across distributions as an example) and obsolesce issues. Unfortunately (or maybe for the better) they're online only. They did get the setup right though. They ship from the UK and US so most of the first world is within a few days to a week shipping time. ThinkPenguin's using all the right chipsets to fix the problem and not a single system hasn't worked great on any GNU/Linux distribution out of the box for which I've tried.
Predications of shortages is market manipulation, nothing more. It's called DeBeers by those of us in the know. And not free as in, either.
Lol, wut?
Not sure about the rest of the crowd, but everything past Windows 7, and pretty much everything not-PC Microsoft does except Xbox is really not good.
Also, whats with 4+ platforms? Win, Winarm, XBOX, Surface, WinPhone? Talk about fragmentation.
IMHO, Windows 8 is the most serious UI regression I've ever seen.
Legalize the constitution. Think for yourself question authority.
The several times, I've passed the Microsoft store in San Antonio (in a wealthy part of town), it was pretty filled up with shoppers, and had knowledgeable employees.
Also, the Surface is better than the iPad.
What else should be expected from worst buy and microshite, though?
Where else can the employees use their coupons for their dog food?
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
The little stuff is their profit center. Sometimes Best Buy has some attractive deals on consumer electronics. (Or at least they had in days gone by. Been a while.) So, say, you just got a great deal on the TV or the PC. The sales guy suggests you throw in a patch cable or two -- even generic ones. A power cord. A surge protector. All this crap is marked up to the stratosphere, but you don't think about it because you are so chuffed with the steal you just got on the big ticket item. But check. Two dollar power cables for $14.00 etc. It's horrible. Really. I once paid nearly twenty dollars for a Sansa data cable (Don't ask. My wife was involved.) The point is that by the time you are are done with the ancillary crap the store has made its true profit.
By the way, it's a time-honored play for a discount retailer. You get a good deal on a suit. Then the salesman walks over with a couple of shirts and maybe a good looking tie. Little stuff and you think "Why the hell not?" When you should think "Hell no."
If you need patch cables and power cords on a same-day basis try a little mom and pop computer store. Generally I have found much better deals on little stuff in these places. Not as cheap as a net retailer, but way down from a Big Box discounter. Counter intuitive to go small I know. But marking up small items is often how these big discounters make money. And, hey, the little guys can use the business.
PS I used to wear suits. But not any more... bitches. Not any more.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Especially for Best Buy, I think the boutique idea makes tremendous sense for them given that they are basically stuck with stores that are too big.
Now, few people are going to rush to Best Buy just to check out Microsoft, but then you add Samsung and maybe a couple others and that's starting to be interesting, a reason to stop by. Radio Shack can't play that game because they have small stores.
As for Microsoft, this is a way of rolling out a lot of stores across the US without getting locked into long term leases that they may later regret. Yeah, right now their consumer lineup doesn't look too exciting, but a year or two down the road things could be different. Things change quickly and they have the resources to buy hit products created by others.
So the people in the Best Buy are employed by Best Buy... but the Microsoft Store within Best Buy has their own employees who respond to... who? Some microsoft manager who's not in the building or to the Best Buy manager? Are they also sharing the facilities? This thing is complicated. Unless the Microsoft store part is also managed by Best Buy's employees/management
I will ask stupid questions and then tough ones. See how much the minimum wage kid knows about windows 8, i.e. make him feel like an idiot. Maybe I would break some of the flimsy shit they are trying to sell. Maybe bring a shopping cart over and fill the damn thing up with anything he would sell to me, so I can take it thru the store and throw it behind racks and in places where it is a bitch to get. Peel off the RFID tags and put them on something that doesn't requite a tag so when the customer leaves the body guards have to stop him and do a strip search looking for the Microsoft item the person is trying to steal! LOL Open some of the software items that say no return if seal broken. Tell him the only way I would work for MS is if Steve Balmer sucked my D!CK! LOL
I can go on and on with how these MS stores will turn into prank halls! LOL
I really don't want to shop at Best Buy anymore.
It amazes me that Best Buy executives don't grok the whole Windows 8 thing. They've got nothing but laptops running Windows 8 at Best Buy, and their laptop sales are in the toilet. Do they really believe that handing the reins for 2400 sq feet of retail space over to Microsoft is going to improve matters?
Will I be able to use my expiring Microsoft Points in the Microsoft store to purchase things?
...back in the early 00's. We had the RCA wall, the MSN kiosk, specific space for Verizon, Sprint, and Tracfone... Very little of the store was left for what made Radio Shack Radio Shack. Since then they've taken some of the shelf and floor space back, but very little is Radio Shack's own shit, and it doesn't matter anyways because they don't hire anyone who has a fuckin' clue anyhow.
I guess thinking about it, Best Buy is already most of the way there, so fuck it, why not further marginalize themselves by giving someone else space in their shop.
The Blue Shirt of Death
Dont scoff, this is how they roll...
If "carve out space" means they're going to put the store in an asteroid, I'm all for it!
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
The one in Scottsdale Fashion Square, which was their first store I think, has been pretty busy whenever I've walked by. Up the road at Kierland, the Apple store is hard to get the attention of an employee it is so packed. And there are a lot of employees.
Two dying brands from the 90s in one place. We just need to round up the remnants of Gateway now.
Oh boy. Let's take two sinking ships, strap them together, and hope that they float.
The one upside for Microsoft is that they have an opportunity to make close contact with their end users. If they're smart enough to use this feedback (an unproven assumption), they could start creating products people actually want to use.
Your entire second paragraph is all wild guesses you made up as you went along!?!
Microsoft opened a store today (13 June 2013) in Honolulu's Ala Moana Shopping Center (I skipped on going to the opening ceremonies). There is also an Apple store in the same shopping center. Alas, I haven't heard of any plans for a Linux store :)
They deserve each other
Surely Microsoft is aware of their own foot traffic counts (hint: you can't count your own employees, Microsoft. Just sayin') and it doesn't take any effort to count feet at Best Buy. Both numbers are low, in my unprofessional anecdotal observations. Shoppers leaving both stores empty-handed are also rather high.
The last time I was in a Best Buy was the first Saturday and Monday in December. Just a few weeks before Christmas, the store was almost entirely empty of shoppers except for the mobile phone counter. That little area had a line and you had to sign in to get on the wait list to be served. Like everyone else, I went there to get a new phone and went back to exchange it for a different one. Both times, I had to wait about two hours.
Cause for the delay? People coming in with old phones asking to have their phone books transferred to newer devices. For example, somebody with an old flip phone trying to migrate to an iPhone. Or from an old iPhone to a new one. Best Buy has some sort of terminal to do this and it was dog slow and there were many people in line for this sort of thing, which was apparently free free free. They never said no to anyone.
Best Buy would do a lot for everyone if they either stopped coddling the technically challenged or made this some kind of automated kiosk. There is NO reason to tie up paid mobile sales people with zero revenue tasks that also happen to piss off the people in line waiting to drop several hundred bucks on some device. I hate to be crude but I don't care if some dood can't figure out how to migrate from an old iPhone to a new one.
Anyway, wandering around during that wait, it was easy to watch the traffic. There was very little. A few people browsing games. Clerks standing around with literally nothing to do. Nobody in checkout lines. Remember, this was three weeks before Christmas. There should have been lines. There was nothing.
This is not the first time I have seen Best Buy nearly dead on a Saturday afternoon. Other nearby stores like Walmart, Target, Costco, Sams, all hopping busy at the same time of day. No foot traffic means it's not showrooming that's killing you. It's not having shoppers AT ALL.
Sig for hire.
I think microsoft should open multiple in-store stores in every best buy. Spend a lot on in-store promotions. Keep with the standard best-buy practice of instant mail-in rebates. If they could spend 3-5 billion dollars per year selling windows phone 7, zune, bob, encarta, and bing it would be awesome (but remember, its best to keep you efforts to the best buy in-store stores).
10 years ago? That was last month. That's their current policy if their online store screws up you can't return it to the physical store.
Confirm same in both the Seattle and San Francisco stores. Seattle might have an "excuse" - it's near MS headquarters, and in walking distance of a very large university - but the San Francisco one was just as full even though it was near closing time. They seem to draw about the same size of crowds as Apple stores, in my experience, leaving aside spikes in traffic toward either one following a major product release.
Actually acknowledging facts that indicate Microsoft's stores are doing fine would be contrary to the groupthink, though, so don't expect nearly the mod points that the jokers get.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
And I realize that Gateway did this once before... And now the Gateway store is an arts and crafts scrap-booking store. One slate tablet (with mixed reviews none the less) dost not a successful store front make...
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
Best Buy's former CEO, Brian Dunn, was named Worst CEO of 2012.
Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, "Should Have Already Been Fired." Quote from the article: "Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today."
More about Steve Ballmer from that article: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
Scroll down in this article to see Businessweek's January 16 cover that called Steve Ballmer "Monkey Boy". The cover says "No More", but that doesn't take away from the fact that the magazine called him Monkey Boy -- on its cover.
I think you are out of touch with what everyone is saying, not just Slashdot commenters. For example, from Forbes Magazine, about Steve Ballmer: "The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value -- and jobs."
It's NOT just us. EVERYONE dislikes Monkey Boy. (Scroll down in that article.)
But... If you are lucky enough to have a MicroCenter near you then that is a fine option for same-day shopping. But you have to watch them, too. They make the same cheap-big-stuff-pricey-little-stuff play that Bust Buy does. Except they are a bit more cunning. And the little stuff is priced just low enough so you get it anyway. I got an awesome deal on an Ivy Bridge Mobo and proc when Ivy Bridge landed about a year ago. . The staff was more knowledgeable as well. And, no, I have nothing to do with them. But I saw a shout on /. a few years ago and I was pleased to have one near me in Rockville. But the stores are only in a few cities. Worth a drive, though. Geek Valhalla IMHO.
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
Yo dawg: I heard you like crap stores, so I put a crap store in a crap store
[bad grammar] Best buy a GNU/Linux system
what are the chances of success?
Jobs and Gates creator their companies to be like them. Apple has excelled in publishing, the legal and the music businesses. And they also have excelled in the consumer and of things. Microsoft has excelled in the corporate arena and in the commodity PC. This Best Buy move of Microsoft's just exemplifies the corporate strategy of Microsoft, the market strategy of Microsoft. Microsoft is not building its own stores but it is renting space in 600 stores. That's about 600 times the amount of stores that Apple started with.