“As vacancies increase and retail sales throughout the U.S. remain a shadow of the decade’s boom, Apple Inc.’s stores are defying the recession,” Allison Abell Schwartz and Oshrat Carmiel report for Bloomberg.
“Apple, based in Cupertino, California, increased revenue at its stores by 2.5 percent in the first six months of the year to $3 billion as the rest of the retail industry suffered. During the same period, sales at all U.S. retailers fell 9.2 percent compared with the first half of 2008, according to the U.S. Commerce Department,” Schwartz and Carmiel report.
“Apple’s store performance in the last year has been driven by the iPhone, according to Charlie Wolf, an analyst who covers Apple at Needham & Co. in New York. The retail operation saw a 22 percent increase in traffic during the quarter ended June 27, hosting a total of 38.6 million visitors, Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said on a conference call in July,” Schwartz and Carmiel report.
“Apple’s Fifth Avenue emporium probably has annual sales of more than $350 million, topping any of the chain’s other outlets, said Jeffrey Roseman, executive vice president of real- estate broker Newmark Knight Frank Retail in New York. The location is 10,000 square feet, putting its sales per square foot at a minimum of $35,000, based on Roseman’s estimate,” Schwartz and Carmiel report.
“That’s the equivalent of selling one Mercedes-Benz C300 sedan per square foot,” Schwartz and Carmiel report. “Apple may be the highest grossing retailer ever on Fifth Avenue, said Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the retail leasing and sales division at Manhattan-based Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate. Apple doesn’t disclose store-specific revenue, said Amy Bessette, a spokeswoman at the company.”
Schwartz and Carmiel report, “By comparison, the sales floor at Tiffany & Co. sells as much as $18,000 per square foot, Consolo said. Another famous Fifth Avenue jeweler, Harry Winston Diamond Corp., sells between $12,000 and $13,000, she said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.” – David Goldstein, Channel Marketing Corp. President, remarking on Apple’s launch of retail stores, May 21, 2001
That’s an unbelievable feat by any measure!
Shows what happens when a company takes the correct amount of time to build a proper foundation for future achievement, rather than take shortcuts for the “quick win”.
Meanwhile, The Microsoft Store is the grossest….
And if you have never been there, the store is packed full, almost 24/7/365 of people from all over the NY metro area as well as tourists from around the world.
Only negative is the LONG wait for Genius Bar service…
TT
Yea, headline made me think about the same
Funny how those double barrel words can flip flop around
Anyway … glad to see Apple is the “highest”
BC
Maybe Goldstein should he advising Microloath in how to be successful with their immitation Apple Store.
Has anyone ever tracked down that brilliant analyst Goldstein to see what he has to say for himself?
I don’t think we’ll ever see “Microsoft Store” and “Fifth Avenue” in the same sentence.
Well, that is until Manhattan socialites begin wearing powder-blue track pants, with “Foxy” written in rhinestone letters across the behind, while chewing Trident gum with their mouths open, and carrying wallets full of coupons clipped from The Hudson Penny Saver.
Also, is there any retail district in the world that pulls in more sales than 5th Ave NYC?
Google “David Goldstein, Channel Marketing Corp. President”. Guess what? This asshat wrote a book for executives based on ‘slogans for excellence’. Oh, and from what I can tell, CMC was bought out/remolded in late 2008, and he’s an ‘outside contributor’. Sure, he likely got big $, but no matter how much he can try to wash off the asshat smell with $, it remains.
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Steve516:
I used the 5th ave Genius Bar many times. My wait time was never longer that 5-10 minutes. My appointments were at various times of day (weekend, at 4PM, weeknight at 3:30AM, Friday night at 10PM…). Of course, I had booked my appointment days in advance. Most often, the apointment slots are available about three days in advance for popular time slots, and about a day or two in advance for midnight to 6AM slots (they are usually fully booked for the next 24 hours, though). So, if you walk up and hope to see a Genius, you’ll wait for hours.
In addition to Tiffany and Harry Winston, 5th Ave has stores from Cartier, De Beers (diamonds), Hugo Boss, Louis Vuitton, Armani, Bergdorf-Goodman, Bulgari, Prada, Fendi, Gucci, Versace, Fortunoff, Ferragamo, not to mention NBA store, Disney store, Saks Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwartz, American Girl Place and similar; all this on the ten-block stretch between 49th and 59th streets.
The massive amounts of money that go through these ten blocks in a year are likely greater than annual GDP in any of more than half of all the countries of the world.
And the leader of this illustrious pack is no other than Apple! This is just simply incredible!
Also, did anyone notice that the (supposedly conservative) estimate for Apple is almost twice as much as the No. 2 (Tiffany’s)?
It’s difficult to wrap one’s mind around the fact that iPods, iPhones and Macs make so much more money than obscenely expensive jewelry.
David Goldstein’s contact e-mail
e-info@cmcus.com
Have fun.
Hey pDrag
Of all those stores you named
After someone buys “something” from them
How many of those “somethings” will allow someone to make $omething ?
Well, ok, not counting Hookers or Ladder Climbing Socialites …
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BC