Samsung Electronics today released the following press release, verbatim:
Samsung Electronics announced today a unique relationship with Best Buy, the world’s largest consumer electronics retailer, centered on retail innovation for customers to explore, purchase, activate and service the broadest portfolio of Samsung mobile products and accessories. The Samsung Experience Shop™ will be installed in more than 1,400 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores across the U.S. beginning this month. By early May, 900 Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile specialty stores will feature the Samsung Experience Shop, with the remainder launching by early summer.
At the Samsung Experience Shops, consumers can experience Samsung’s full range of mobile products including smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected cameras and accessories, all in one location. The shops enable consumers to interact with and buy Samsung’s latest mobile products and experience how the devices connect together to enrich their lives.
Select Best Buy stores will have Samsung Smart Service™, which includes dedicated Samsung Experience Consultants™ and Best Buy blue shirt sales associates to assist customers with purchasing and activating mobile products on the carrier of their choice, understanding their device and supporting them throughout the lifecycle of their product. The specially trained Samsung Experience Consultants will assist with product demonstrations, basic product services, Samsung account set up, warranty registration and post purchase support.
“Samsung has been delivering the latest innovation across the consumer electronics category for some time,” said Dale Sohn, president of Samsung Telecommunications America. “With the Samsung Experience Shops, we are ensuring consumers get the most of that innovation by learning how to leverage their mobile devices across our ecosystem of consumer electronics. Consumers will have one place to not only explore and learn about our full portfolio of mobile products, but also the support of a Samsung expert to help with selecting and servicing them. This will truly be a unique mobile shopping experience.”
The shops vary in size, with the largest being approximately 460 square feet. Within the larger shops, the Samsung Connected Solutions™ area creates a place for customers to see how easily Samsung devices connect and share content across multiple screens.
“We look forward to showcasing Samsung products in the Samsung Experience Shop in all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile locations. This is part of our Renew Blue transformation strategy – working closely with vendor partners to innovate and drive value, while also updating our stores to focus on growing and profitable categories,” said Shawn Score, head of U.S. Retail for Best Buy. “Our promise to our customers is simple: we’re committed to providing the best value, service and selection. Our partnership with Samsung on the Samsung Experience Shop is another way we’re delivering on that promise.”
In addition to the in-store experience, a Samsung Experience Shop launches today online – www.bestbuy.com/samsungexperienceshop – featuring product shopping aisles and a full overview of the Samsung Experience Shop.
Source: Samsung Electronics
MacDailyNews Take: Another giant step in Best Buy’s effort to make their name completely ironic.
There goes the tech neighborhood…
The best part about this is I won’t have to wade through the false comparison displays of their products to avoid the Samsung products. I will now be able to avoid that one section of the store completely and I’m good. Wahoo!
Best Buy is Samsung’s bitch. I know people who worked there and they were told specifically to push Samsung products. They set all their TV’s at a vivid setting and the rest at normal or dim and then use the comparison to show everyone how much more vivid the colors are. The salesman can make a little more commission as well if they sale a certain volumn of Samsung products in the month.
I love it, it’s so going to backfire on them. They’re not Apple.
LOL, just one more thing Samsung is copying Apple for. The key difference is that Samsung is paying, why else would Samsung announce this and not Best Buy?
Oh my. Excellent point. Samsung forking out cash, yet again, attempting to BUY MARKET SHARE. I hear laughter in the air. Heehee. Haha. 😆
I’m sure the stores within a store won’t look anything like Apple’s.
I wager five thousand quatloos against!
💰 💰 💰 💰 💰
And haha on the MDN take on it.
Guess Samesung paying the big bucks for this. Copying Apple concept again.
With the high prices, clueless salespeople, and the Geek Squad masquerading as people who actually fix things, it was already painful to go into a Best Buy store. Adding the pain of the Samsung Experience leads me to the conclusion that masochism is simply the next psychological disorder to be defined into normalcy, and that most of the sufferers will henceforth be found at Best Buy.
“The Samsung Experience”…. Remember that scene in Slumdog Millionaire when he drops into the, um, refuse….
Bad news for Apple, I hate to say it. It means 1,400 locations where people get their hands on the wrong product. Most likely a lot of them will buy, much more than I’d like to hear. No reason for LOL. Absolutely not.
May I ask why Apple is not using 25% of the giant cash sum to build new Apple stores? Give me a serious reason not to invest in the own retail chain.
I’m with you on the “build more Apple Stores” proposal. I live in an area of SE Michigan, near the Ohio border, where the nearest Apple Store is an hour’s drive each way. I know we don’t have the population density of Metro Detroit, but a nice small Apple Store in the Mall in Toledo OH or stand alone in Downtown Monroe MI would have serious foot traffic everyday. We don’t need a giant Chicago sized Apple Store – but something with the latest and greatest, and some knowledgeable Tech support would be well accepted and highly used.
Move to the Minneapolis/St Paul metro area: we have five Apple Stores!
I’m with you. I don’t think Apple’s problem is that they don’t have enough retail stores of their own. Not that they couldn’t build stores in some new areas but that’s not what Apple needs to make top priority.
@iFan: I am in Berlin. We have ZERO Apple Stores. Apple started to build one two years ago (ten years late), but it is still not open. Berlin has a 4 million population and could easily have 4 or 5 stores. There are other resellers like Gravis, but no Apple store.
As far as I know there are 5 or 6 Apple stores in Germany for a 80 million population. It really makes no sense to me. And Germany still is a wealthy country with a lot of Apple fans.
Tim, don’t leave us in the dark!
I guess that’s the point I’m trying to make – IMHO Apple needs to consider a series of scaled down stores. There are plenty of communities in the USA and around the world that can’t support a “destination” store like Chicago, Scottsdale, or Grand Central Station. These small communities need a small Apple Store – something with minimal investment that can be completed quickly.
I know the strategy is to use Walmart and Target in smaller communities, but those employees aren’t trained to know Apple products. And forget about asking for any form of help from a Best Buy Nerd Squad member concerning an Apple product.
I’m envisioning small stores, one product bench holding everything from Macs to iPods, staffed by 3 sales people at most with a 1 or 2 person Genius Bar. That’s all a small community needs. If it ends up being a screaming success, then expand the store. The best place to buy an Apple product is in an Apple Store.
There aren’t many people I know that will drive an hour just for the experience. They’re not going to come to the experience, the experience needs to come to them.
I don’t see what Best Buy is trying to do really. When they put all of the Samsung stuff in close proximity to each other, people will be able to see and touch the stuff. Samsung is doomed.
I think closed boxes is the best approach.
I see this as nothing more than yet-another Samsung bungle, totally good news for Apple.
‘Oops, Apple gear in the same store? OH NO! Don’t let the customers see!!!’
I’m taking bets on when Samsung PULLS OUT of Best Buy from shame. 😆
“Samsung Electronics announced today a unique relationship with Best Buy”
unique? lol, amazing.
Yet another chance for Americans to buy second rate crap from a foreign company while ignoring an American company who, in this case, makes superior products at competitive prices.
What is the fascination of buying imports unless they are better and cheaper? I don’t understand. I always buy Canadian when it is reasonably competitive (I don’t mind paying more as long as the quality is there). Everyone should do that within their own country.
Call it Déjà Vu, because all of the customers will be saying, “I thought I saw this over at the Apple display.”
I’m guessing much like the giant Kindle and Surface displays at my local Target – the Samsung Experience will soon be in the back corner of every Best Buy they’re installed in.
obviously.. BEST BUY now promotes non american companies more than the DESIGNED/Made in the USA brand…. sorry samsung phones were designed in the USA just not by samsung
I wonder if the coming Korean war will impact on Samsung’s production capacity, and whether Apple have alternate supply lines in place for those components still sourced from South Korea… It would be quite Karmic if Samsung had nothing to put in their stores when they open…
The “Samsung Experience” shops should feature an archway with a stuffed monkey perched on top. When customers walks in, the monkey pees on their head.
I hope they get sued by hospitals for calling them ICUs.
Never in my life have I witnessed such a “me too” company….unbelievable
I suggest Apple employee should go to the Samsu_k shop within Best Buy and do the following…
(1) Holding up your Apple badge (with your face and name covered, of course)
(2) Flip your middle finger and point at Samsu_k logo
(3) Take a picture
(4) Send it to MDN 🙂
if they want to get fired… or give Apple bad publicity
Um, no. That’s a Samsung worthy juvenile thinking sort of thing to do. It’s not worthy of Apple. Take off the Apple badge and try again, send it to your equally childish friends. Or push Samsung’s buttons and send them a copy. They’ll take it seriously. 😆
“Oh, what smells”, asks a Best Buy customer.
“Oh, that, you get used to it after a while I guess”, the clerk says.
“How could you get used to that, it smells like a toilet”, the customer exclaims.
“It’s just our Samsung Excrement Shop, there is, like a lot of crap in there, I get a spiff if I sell you something from it, can I interest you in, umm… hey, don’t leave, come back…”
spiffy Samsung.
:-Q*****
So another way they copy. Apple has had shops manned by actual Apple employees in them for years. I know of 4 locations in my metro area that have these people in stores and they’re absolutely stellar… Bought my last Mac from one..
BRING IT ON SAMSUNG! Side by side comparison of Apple gear to Samsung schlock. It’s going to be gory.
Be EXTRA sure to jack up the floor walker bribery Samsung! It’s your ONLY hope. Clonal dickheads. 😛
Unique relationship LOL 🙂
I must say all you apple enthusiasts what is so great about apple as your tablets are boring, you have no technology behind your products. Samsung is the innovator, everything that makes a apple device run the way it does is because of samsung. you don’t support flash, expansion of your devices. And if you apple is so great whey are so many people switching to s4 and all samsung tablets. Because apple is going down just like there stock.