Apple's Regent Street Store takes £60m/year (or £2k/sqft)

Caught this piece in The Telegraph about Apple’s ‘dominance’ over Microsoft (i.e. they’ve got a bigger share valuation). Toward the end, the piece explains that Apple is due to launch a new flagship store in Covent Garden. That’s going to be interesting to check-out.

I’ve long admired how they do things at their Regent Street store — indeed, it was always a contrast to the always-empty Nokia store placed directly opposite it. Turns out Apple are doing well with their retail monetisation strategy. The Telegraph explains that it’s the most profitable shop in the UK taking £60m/year in revenue — which equates to £2,000 per square foot. No surprise. I reckon I’ve spent about £10k there over the last 3 years myself.

I do enjoy the fact that Apple’s retail policy is injected with reality. Yes it’s expensive. But if there’s a problem, they’re quick and smart about sorting it. Case in point: I bought a MacBook Pro laptop there a while ago for my wife. Got home with it, started it up — and nothing. For some strange reason, nothing happened. I cabbed it back down to the store, took it along (without the packaging) and the manager there opened up another box and gave me a new one, immediately. No question. No thinking. No waiting-for-the-area-manager-to-speak-to-somebody. The chap wisely knew that my experience (i.e. paying shitloads for the laptop) was completely screwed by the device not working when I got home. The last thing I wanted was to dick around with returns. I walked out happy. The issue was fixed in-store in about 60 seconds. This was on a busy Saturday afternoon too.

At PC World, you and I both know there would have been hand-wringing galore for hours and I’d have needed to take a knife to the throat of some poor Saturday know-nothing sales chap before anyone would have phoned head office to get permission to even start thinking about helping with a replacement.

Good news Apple.