Apple has announced plans to open three specialist shops to sell its spangly new Apple Watch, based in London, Tokyo and Paris.
Apple is clearly super-confident in its new Watch, which opens for pre-orders on April 10th, as it’s just announced a trio of new stores dedicated entirely to the wearable.
The Apple Watch store here in the UK will be based in Selfridges on Oxford Street, right in the heart of London. The other branches will be found in the upmarket Galeries Lafayette in Paris’s 9th arrondissement, and Isetan in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district.
Apple has reportedly been seeking out staff from other retail stores to run the new ventures and the Cupertino company is expected to add more stores throughout Europe over the coming months, probably sooner rather than later if the Watch sells as well as expected.
The new shops will apparently be one hundred per cent dedicated to the Apple smartwatch, so customers with issues pertaining to any of Apple’s other products will directed to existing retail stores.
Apple’s space in Selfridges will be located next to the department store’s Wonder Room (which plays host to the likes of Chopard, Bremont and Gucci), which gives a very clear indicator of Apple’s lofty aspirations for its first smartwatch.
Customers wishing to take a gander at the new device in all of its guises, or indeed pre-order it, will be able to do so at an Apple store between the hours of 9:30am and 9pm, Monday to Saturday, or 11:30am and 6:15pm on a Sunday, starting on April 10th. The watch will go on sale to the general public on April 24th.
The device will start at £299 for the basic ‘sport edition’ and climb to an eye-watering £13k for the high-end rose gold model, which will only be available from selected retail stores.
Other bespoke watch makers have indicated that they will be offering custom editions of the Apple Watch too, though they will only be made available through independent stores.
Leave a Reply