“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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Another belated case of monkey see, monkey do and I am sure they will muck it up anyway.
Dell Store: Inspired by Apple Store.
Soon we will be open a 24/7/365 store in NY.
Thanks, Bonkers! I’ve know to be bonkers too.
HEY! Did you hear? There might be a brand new Inspiron ! ! ! Me neither.
There will be one person camping out for the grand opening of the new Dell Store in West Nyack. His name is Herbert Montgomery Fremont III, age 57, on his third marriage, thinks vertical apps are neat, drives a Taurus because it was economical, once had an MP3 player but couldn’t get his Lawrence Welk collection loaded, and he will absolutely stay in line waiting for a brand spanking new Latitude because his mom is in Atlantic City for the WHOLE WEEK! Party on dude. Then he’ll discover he can’t take it home after buying it and return home sulking to his ample collection of Fortune magazines and Crossfire tapings.
ahh the Palisades Center?? I live 10 minutes from there, and there is an Apple store there too
dell sucks though.
Crap. So much for my proofreading skills. Oh well.
What’s the point of a Dell store?
The one person with a Dell DJ will go to the Dell DJ Bar to purchase a wide array of accessories and car integration kits? Oh. Nevermind, there are no accessories for the DJ.
While slurping down an Orange Julius someone decides they’re wanting to take home a new laptop, why not stop by the Dell store? Oh. Nevermind, they have no product in stock. Off to Best Buy to buy a WindowsXP bathroom scale.
Why wait in line to play with cutting edge computers and accessories, when there’s no lines at the Dell store to play with the same computer they endure using at work. Nothing is as much fun as reliving your workday in your free time, or playing a nice game of Freecell.
DELL SUCKS!
That is all.
Go back to whatever you were doing.
…so people cannot actually walk into a Dell store and walk out with a computer, like at an Apple store?
Didn’t Gateway already demonstrate what a crappy idea that is?
overheard at a Dell store coming near you:
I have this here winders me machine and she keeps popping up these here porn-o sites. i caint seem ta getter to download ahye-tunes! kin ya help me? what’s that… buy a new computer? You kiddin me? this here machine’s been great, i don’t need no upgrade! my brother’s a programmer…
mdn word: “love”… awww
Hey, Mike,
I live about 10 minutes from the Northpark Center in Dallas – let’s go stand outside the stores and laugh!
I’m guessing they’ll be as far on the opposite side of each mall as possible, so people won’t be tempted into the Apple store just around the corner.
I went to a mall in San Antonio that had an Apple Store and a Sony Store. The Apple Store was packed wall to wall with people and the Sony Store was practically empty.
I agree with the poster who said it’ll be interesting to see the juxtaposition of the two stores.
Oh Goodie! Now all the Dell users can get bad service face to face. If you’re a repeat Dell customer you might as well have masochist stamped on your forehead
I have to verify that tanks experience in San Antonio is not an isolated incident. I was recently in a mall in St. Louis. The Apple store was busy, I went into the Sony store and I was the ONLY customer, a couple of the employees looked at me like “what are you doing here?”. I’m sure the Dell stores will not be unlike the sad little displays they have in the malls, only bigger.
My loathing of all things Dell is only because I’ve experienced more than one of their machines first hand and suffered through their customer service for 3 years, never again..EVER.
rasterbator,
I had the same problem in Camino. I just reloaded and it fixed the problem.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the big strategy is to style the stores similar to Apple stores, so people might “accidentally” wander in looking for iPods. Maybe they’re going for the confused shopper segment that thinks all digital music players are “iPods”.
There have been Sony stores in Canada for years. They aren’t exactly owned by Sony but they are heavily regulated by Sony.
Their biggest selling products are Sony TV’s, movie cameras and Component Stereos.
They carry a few Sony computer products but the salespeople haven’t got a clue about computers. They keep the computers in locked display cases where potential buyers can’t even touch them.
Funniest thing of all, when you want to check out the newest Vaio in a Sony store, the clerks try to steer you over to the nearest Stereo or HDTV.
ampar, loving your humor, but I graduated from HS in 1970, and grew up on rock and roll, so in your character description of the Lawrence Welk listening dude, you’re really speaking of my Dad’s generation – he’s 80, not anywhere near 57… other than little airball on generations, you might have a future in comedy… just keep practicing, and maybe research just a bit…
Oh, and thanx MDN for finally removing that format offending post.
The Bottom Line?
Dell will succeed, by its own failure, to show just how different Apple really is…
A bit cranky are we? I’ll work on the math. Thanks!
(I once had a cassette tape of Don Ho’s greatest hits. A real crowd pleaser!)
I hope they don’t count on making money with these stores !
A little late, aren’t we……the bandwagon left years ago
“Does anyone, for a minute, think a single celebrity would ever be caught in one of these Dell stores!? Not a chance.”
I would ! No one else wants me.
since someone upthread used the words Dell and porno in the same sentence it seems appropriate to throw this link out there (SFW)
porno
I noticed an ABC logo in the corner of that clip…was that actually from one of those lame “tv’s greatest bloopers” shows they put on on saturday nights sometimes? I don’t believe QVC has live audiences. Who would show up for a taping?
“Does anyone, for a minute, think a single celebrity would ever be caught in one of these Dell stores!?”
Carrot Top, the stoned Dell Dude, and the entire cast of every season of The Surreal Life.