Microsoft Opens Tony Fifth Avenue Store

Microsoft on Monday opened its flagship store in Manhattan.



With an area of more than 22,000 square feet, it's the company's largest store and its 113th brick-and-mortar retail establishment. It's also the first Microsoft store that's two stories high.
The company gutted a 1930s building that was previously a Fendi store and replaced the street-facing facade with giant glass panes. The building has a 40- by 20-foot exterior culture wall that will display noncommercial artistic images.



Better Late Than Never?
Microsoft has been opening stores in North America for the past six years, and you might think the flagship store would be first, to plant its flag, so to speak. Why did it take the company so long to open a flagship store?
"They've been tweaking the concept and their products," said RSR Research Managing Partner Paula Rosenblum.
Apple, whose store is just down the block, "didn't open their flagship store first either," pointed out Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group.
"Often, it takes a combination of the right location and right vision," he said. Microsoft's original vision "didn't appear to include a flagship store."
Apple's Influence
Like all Microsoft stores, the flagship has design elements strongly influenced by Apple's stores -- which makes sense, as Apple has developed the art of retail store layouts to a high degree.
Laptops and phones on display are not tethered to tables, so visitors can pick them up and try them, and there are stools beside the tables for visitors. Wooden tables and floors enhance the ambience.
The new Surface Pro 4 tablets are available, and there's a station where visitors can play Xbox games.
In addition to showcasing various Microsoft products, the store has an Answer Desk that offers expert support for PCs and phones from any vendor.
It also has two theaters, which will be available for free community and educational programs.

Evolution of the Microsoft Store

Microsoft "developed a retail lab about a decade ago, and that's where they developed their store effort," Enderle told the E-Commerce Times.
The stores were "well laid out with regard to product shelving, using a variant of what Sharper Image stores used to employ and Brookstone still uses, [but] they didn't seem to grasp the need or use of products to draw people into the stores," he said. "Thus, regardless of traffic near the store, the in-store traffic significantly lagged Apple stores."
Now, with products like HoloLens, Surface Book and the new Microsoft Band, Microsoft "has the potential to draw people into its stores," Enderle suggested.