“Apple Inc. just opened its first official retail store in Scandinavia, in the Täby Centrum shopping centre north of Stockholm,” Sven Grundberg reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The store, which opened its doors on Sept 15 is Apple’s 381st retail store, and made Sweden the 13th country to have one.”
“Although the grand opening was very well visited, with a throng of enthusiasts lining up to witness the wonders of Cupertino, a YouTube video (below) of the opening, made many Swedes feel awkward,” Grundberg reports. “Radio producer Tor Billgren tweeted: ‘On behalf of my country I apologize to the world for these scenes at the opening of an Apple store near Stockholm.'”
Grundberg reports, “He wasn’t the only one. The video on YouTube has already picked up 1183 dislikes. Only 87 have liked it.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We’ve seen that awkward, “What exactly in the hell are they doing?” look at other Apple Retail Store grand openings when the crew gets fired up. In the U.S., even, but in the U.S. and pretty much everywhere else it always seems to evaporate after a few seconds as most everybody decides to go with the spirit.
This one felt awkward for a long time; like we’d imagine one of Microsoft’s fake Apple store grand openings would be like without the free concert tickets they use lure warm bodies to their “celebrations” of stores to which the “celebrants” will never return sans freebies.
At least these Swedes were there for Apple, even if they were a bit taken aback.
