“Dell Inc. will break its long boycott against retail sales with two stores at shopping malls later this year, but the company said it will remain true to its direct model by having shoppers order products online for delivery,” Dan Zehr reports for The American Statesman. “Dell will open the two stores, each about 3,000 square feet, at the NorthPark Center in Dallas and the Palisades Center in West Nyack, N.Y. The company planned to begin recruiting employees with ads today in local newspapers, said Jim Skelding, director of the pilot program.”
“The Dallas store will open in late summer, and the New York store will open in fall, Skelding said. Dell has dabbled in retail before. It ended an experiment with small outlets at a handful of Sears stores in 2003. The company has 161 kiosks at malls across the country, where customers can see a few products and place orders,” Zehr reports. “But Dell is feeling new heat from rivals, who have been able to capitalize on strong growth in consumer sales because they sell in stores.”
“The new stores are a step toward full-blown retail for a company that has previously said selling in stores is a money-losing strategy,” Zehr reports. “The stores also will sell Dell services, such as home network installation, he said. The company still is working out how to handle tech support questions that existing customers might bring to the store, a spokesman said. Workers at its kiosks put shoppers with service issues in touch with Dell’s existing customer-care staff… Apple Computer Inc. has been storming ahead in the consumer market. Like H-P and Gateway, it sells through retail chains, but much of its recent growth has come from its sleekly designed Apple stores. The company has 133 stores nationwide. The newest one, which opened Friday on Fifth Avenue in New York, will be open 24 hours a day… Each store averages about $20 million in sales per year, said George Whalin, president of Retail Management Consultants in San Marcos, Calif. The stores account for about 17 percent of the company’s $13.9 billion revenue. Apple has stores in the two malls Dell is moving into and a 4,000-square-foot store at Barton Creek Square in Austin.”
MacDailyNews Note: Apple now operates 147 stores, including six in Japan, six in the U.K. and two in Canada.
Zehr continues, “Although Dell’s new stores evoke some comparisons with Apple, they’re more similar to Gateway’s now-defunct chain of Gateway Country Stores. Gateway started out in retail much as Dell is starting now, using only online sales and carrying no inventory at its stores. It expanded beyond that during the holiday shopping season in 2000, when it put products in its outlets for the first time so last-minute shoppers could buy things cash-and-carry. At the time, Gateway had expanded to more than 320 stores nationwide, including one in Austin. But by the time it shuttered the entire chain in April 2004, the gap between it and Dell was as stark as the black and white of Gateway’s logo: Dell’s share of the U.S. personal computer market was 29.5 percent, while Gateway had 7.3 percent, according to IDC, which tracks technology sales. ‘The first thing everyone will say (about Dell) is, ‘It’s Gateway all over again,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD Techworld. ‘Dell is not Gateway: It has a much bigger position in the marketplace and a much stronger brand name.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s Gateway all over again. Dell is Gateway. Gateway is Dell. They’re just box assemblers with a third-party operating system from Microsoft. They pay little attention to detail, little attention to design, little attention to the customer’s experience, but devote lots of attention to the bottom line. Dell, Gateway, Lenovo, etc. – name any one, they’re all the same – they’re not trying to innovate or lead or strive to deliver excellence to their customers. They don’t even make the operating system; turn any PC on and they’re all the same mediocre thing. The specific box assembler is virtually meaningless. They’re just assembling a mediocre commodity and trying to out-market each other. If you think that people who don’t work for Dell will line up for Dell store openings days in advance, you’re nuts. Forget about people flying in from Europe for the store; Dell will be lucky if they bother to walk over from the other end of the mall. We hope Dell wastes a crippling amount of capital on this venture. If Dell ceased to exist this afternoon, nobody outside of Dell and DELL shareholders would mourn or even notice. Just plug in the next Windows box assembler, no big deal. Some “choice,” by the way. There is only one true personal computer company left and then there are all the rest, making and marketing bland, inferior, upside-down and backwards Apple Mac knock-offs to a buying public that still don’t really understand what they’re buying.
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Signs of desperation? I love it that after a non stop news weekend about Apple’s cube store, Dell decides to do a “me too” with this retail store business. Aboslutely not the kind of company I wan’t to buy from…
Is this a joke? What makes Dell believe it will have a different experience than Gateway. Apple has some amazing and unique products that people want to “touch and feel” in person. Apple creates an entertaining shopping experience to display those products. (And you can even pay for those products and walk out the door with your purchase, because it is a STORE, afterall.)
That’s why people line up at Apple Store openings; because they are events. I hope someone remembers these Dell Store openings, and posts pictures of the “crowd” in attendance. It should be about as exciting as a new Radio Shack opening.
Too funny to made up.
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Can’t you just see “Dell Pilgrims camping out overnight to be among the first to go into the new Hell retail Store?
Are they going to have a <b>”Moron Bar”</i>
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Why don’t they sell them at Walmart like all other crappy products? Seriously, Dell. When I read the title of the story I was ROFLMAO.
ATTENTION: MACDAILYNEWS — FIX THE DIV OR TABLE WIDTH FOR THE COMMENTS ON THIS PAGE.
Well Dell can take the store that Gateway had here in Indiana. It’s still empty. They even painted over the stupid cow patterns that made an ugly building even uglier. Its so bad even a fireworks store (empty retail buildings here often have a fireworks store in the spring and summer) has never opened there.
Sorry HTML police, I was laughing so damn hard, I screwed up.
Dell has a few of those kiosks right down the hall from Apple Stores in malls.
After coming from a busy Apple Store and then seeing those ugly cheap Dells sitting on those lame kiosks all by themselves, it’s obvious who is going to win the retail race.
Hush, hush, super secret: Why didn’t you just break up that ridiculous url with a
space – now I have to scroll clear across the page horizontally! Sure, sure… I know. Get a bigger monitor, etc.. blah, blah. But just know it’s annoying for those of us still relying on our 800 x 600 res. laptops. Please, just give it some thought next time…
Rasterbator,
I totally agree! Why do some pages fit in my web browser and others stretch for MILES, like this one?
You may see lines of workers trying to escape the stores mind
First Dell copied Apple’s industrial design (with not comparison of course), then they have the Dell DJ, now retail store? When are they going to stop copying Apple?
Dell Stores:
True to Windows the exits will say entrance.
At random spots in the store you’ll get stuck, become immobile and an employee will have to carry you outside so you can start your shopping again.
Several hundred dedicated employees wearing black cloth to enforce anonymity will follow you around and toss useless discount offers and unusable coupons in your shopping basket.
A pimply faced teen dressed as Merlin will appear at random to try to tell you your shopping is being done incorrectly and only he can show you the right way but it might take an hour or three.
Another dressed as a convoluted pieces of bent wire will try to confuse you with annoying aisle and shelf locations. He’ll ask you if you want him to go away and then he won’t.
Twenty to thirty employees will sneeze or cough on you. Guaranteed.
One employee will ask if you want them to stop sneezing on you. You agree. He’ll ask for your credit card first.
Your every move will be tracked by hidden cameras. All of the data will go many places. Round Rock, TX, Redmond, WA, Baghdad, Beijing, and East Nyack, NY.
You will not enjoy your shopping experience and no one will care.
While I can’t imagine Dell having much success with a store strategy, especially in two malls that already have Apple Stores; I think that people are being too harsh about the Dell kiosks. They seem to be nicely designed (as nice as they can be, considering that they show Dell computers!) and the employees appear to be interested in their work (what little of it there is).
I just don’t see any strategy, kiosk or store, that involves attempting to convince people to place an online order; instead of being able to walk away with their purchase. Dell is certain to hemorrhage money with this new venture.
And you’ll come down with a virus after you leave the store.
For some years there was this ‘pay now, collect later’ store chain in the UK called Time. Very like Dell in many ways (low price, just about good enough quality, poor support) except they had this high street presence. I bought a Windows PC from them once and had to return to collect it two weeks later. People won’t tolerate that these days. They want to pay now and walk out of the door with the product. Apple Stores have got it right; Time died an ignominious death some time ago.
Magic word: ‘bad’ – ‘it’s a bad model’
Excuse me sir, could I interest you in a dull grey box?
bobby Skinner: “Excuse me sir, could I interest you in a dull grey box?”
So, you’ve met my ex-wife? Good luck with that.
P.S. Good thing for me that my judgement in computers is better than my judgement in picking women. Victoria and Princess have never let me down.
Can’t wait till they open a DC/Baltimore store. That would be AWESOME! Long lunches, playing hooky from work, just to go look at all the super crazy cool stuff that you can’t see anywhere else….. except any Best Buy/Circuit City/Costco/Walmart/Sears…..
Everyone in the areas concerned should show up on opening day. When three salespersons descend on them, the lone customer, ask them for directions to the Apple store
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now,
What was it Michael Dull once said about Apple .. and Steve Jobs ?
SERVICE:
A big issue Dell must deal with is service.
A. Dell supports Windows in the stores, becoming Redmond’s free support center, with 10 second support by saying over and over “Just re-install Windows, that will fix everything.”
or
B. Dell will support Windows in the stores, but only via a yearly fee-based support. If one chooses not to pay to play, go call Billy G.
C. Dell can refuse OS support entirely and offer no pay to play option.
Choose your path because either way it makes Apple’s vertical solution look fantastic from a consumer standpoint, because it is.
Apple makes a ton of money at it’s stores via iPod sales… Sony Style stores make their money of TV and stereo and speaker solutions, etc.. What is Dell going to sell in order to make a profit outside of selling cheap looking PC’s?… If you say “selling Dell Plasma TV’s” don’t count on it. It is again a commodity – all the same thing – purchase, which will be shopped and won’t provide the volume or margins to support massively expensive mall realestate.
Fear not Mac folk. Sony, Dell, Gateway, HP, they could all put in mall stores, and it will only incease Apple’s sales – not hurt them. These other vendors are all fighting for a happy Windoze-using gnomes (or sheep take your pick), wanting another Windows machine.
Meanwhile, people walking into an Apple Store are already Mac users, or are PC users looking to change over to some good ‘ol Mac goodness. Once onboard, few ever go back.
And after all “Buy a Dell, go to Hell? Why chance it, get a Mac.”
I wonder how many people will line up for the Dell Store’s Grand opening. lol
Macmania: “Moron Bar” That cracked me up, thanks!
Ampar: Your description of shopping in the new Dull store was hugely clever, very witty! I loved it!
MW: fear (surprising but true): as in Dull is being driven by fear.