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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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
Quite possibly it'll help bring higher end PCs to Best Buy. If you go there, you'll find a stunningly large number of people still go to best buy and purchases PCs there. Then look at what they sell - cheap ass $500 and below PCs make up the vast majority of what's on display, and what isn't, is basically because they're Apple Macs.
The Ultrabooks have helped somewhat, at least to bring higher end machines in.
Microsoft does however bring in something good - and that's the "Microsoft Premium PC" - basically it's to PCs what Nexus is to Android - a clean, fast Windows experience that has no trial crap and other stuff (even using tools like PC Decrapifier doesn't quite get rid of everything), and clean restore discs and everything (nothing's worse than having to reinstall and just getting the crap back).
But what's happening is Best Buy is actually evolving - they know most of their traffic is showrooming traffic, so they're evolving into being THE showroom. They know they can't compete with Amazon and other online retailers, so they don't. They'll take payments of rent from manufacturers who get to show off their stuff and people come in to look (with perhaps a small amount for those who really need it now), and let Amazon etc., fight for the actual sale. Because really, Best Buy has an existing network of stores that no manufacturer, not even Apple, can hope to match, but to whom bring in enough customers who want to look at stuff before they buy. Plus they can bring out the latest and greatest ASAP for show - it's up to the manufacturers to ship the demos ahead of time.
That I think is what is happening. The first three tenants are Apple, Samsung and Microsoft. But soon others will want in. Bonus points if the manufacturers can even handle returns and exchanges on the spot instead of obnoxiously complex return and exchange procedures (which can be nasty - like warranty exchanges require shipping to some warehouse in China - even if your product is DOA).
I once paid nearly twenty dollars for a Sansa data cable (Don't ask. My wife was involved.)
I think wives are a big reason Best Buy is still around.
My wife wanted a laptop several years ago; I wanted to get one off the internet, but she didn't want to wait for shipping. So off to Best Buy we went, even though I hated that store. We got a demo unit that worked fine in the store, but a day or two after we got it home, the monitor started acting flaky. So we brought it back, and they refused to take it as a defective return (because when they looked at it, it was working fine), but only as a return/refund. But because it had some software I had installed on it, they wanted to charge some ridiculous fee for Geek Squad to uninstall the software so they could resell it (seriously: instead of wiping and reinstalling, they were going to just resell the machine as-is. I could have installed keyloggers or other malware for the next customer to be victimized by). So I had to stand there and uninstall it myself to avoid this fee. Then, while I was in the middle of this process, the monitor finally gave out completely; when they saw that, they went ahead and refunded our money on the spot, but the experience was an ordeal.
After that, my wife swore off ever buying from Best Buy again, and let me buy a laptop from Newegg.