New Apple Stores Reach Far and Wide

Apple’s new retail outlets have now burst into America’s heartland, adding to the empire overseas and now in Canada.  www.ifoAppleStore.com, the premier website for news and information about Apple Computer’s retail stores, has been posting about new store openings at least twice a day for the majority of 2006. Apple’s expansion is long overdue, according to Apple fans and now educators.

On Feb. 28, Macworld Daily News (www.macworld.co.uk/news) reported that Apple is negotiating a new “laptops-for-students deal” with an Iowa school district, North Winneshiek. The deal would give every 5th through 8th grade student a laptop, and the school board district would pay back the loaned computers with $21,000 per year for three years. After the third year payment more Macs could be purchased for $1 each. An Apple store is already in Des Moines and in other high-end malls in Iowa.

The Northpark store in Dallas (the third store in Texas) will host its grand opening this Saturday, March 4.

It has not always been a smooth process for Apple to open new stores. In the October 22, 2004 print edition of the San Jose Business Journal (www.sanjose.bizjournals.com), independent Apple dealers sued Apple Computer Inc. because on October 16, 2004, the first of six planned Apple mini-stores opened at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, and a second at the Westfield Shoppingtown Oakridge Mall in San Jose. Five lawsuits were filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court by dealers “accusing breach of contract and unfair competition by favoring Apple-owned stores over those of independent resellers.”

At the opening of the Palo Alto store, Steve Jobs told reporters, “We are investing in these stores. Most of the resellers are not investing in their stores and haven’t been investing.” The resellers disagreed, claiming that they did not have the financial means equal to Apple Computer in order to upgrade their stores.

“Sayhey,” a http://www.ifoAppleStore.com/forum user, posted in October 2004 that Apple “has a well developed strategy in its selection of locations for its stores. Among the most obvious criteria…are the size of the metropolitan area, the number of Apple users and likely new users in an area, and any specific shopping locations that are useful to Apple.”

Clearly, Apple’s expansion will continue as demographics change and demand continues to rise for stores in all corners of the United States. And stores are opening across Canada. Speculation over where the newest Apple store in Vancouver will be located is a hot debate. Attention is now focused on the downtown Pacific Centre area, operated by Cadillac Fairview, the same company that has dealt with mall leases for all other known Canadian Apple retail stores. 8.5 million tourists visit the area each year, but concerns of size limitation for the store might bring a halt to those plans for that location. In Vancouver, Apple could install a street-level store, possibly a flagship, on two spaces at the intersection of Granville and Dunsmuir Streets, just across from Pacific Centre, and adjacent to The Hudson, a huge new retail-office development.

Toronto’s third retail store is set to open later in 2006 at the Sherway Gardens mall on the west side of the city.  It is 10 miles from the existing Yorkdale and the new Eaton Centre store. Construction, employee training, and store stocking is set for May 6th at the Eaton Centre.
In other exciting Apple retail news, the first store in Nebraska, located in Omaha, is going to open later in 2006.  Omaha, the 12th largest metro area in the country without an Apple store, is only a beginning. The Omaha store will be 130 miles from the Jordan Creek store in Iowa and 183 miles from the Country Club Plaza store in Missouri.  The site for the Omaha store is the new Village Pointe mall on the city’s far west side.

Across the Atlantic, iPod-only stores are appearing in the U.K. Two stores in a chain of iPod-only stores in London opened this week. An authorized reseller operates these stores. Carrying a greater variety of iPod merchandise than a standard Apple store, speculation as to when these retail outlets will hit the United States has begun.

Where will Apple be next? is the new question.