The Apple Watch went on sale in stores Friday. Whether you can just walk into an Apple Store and buy one is another matter.
The debut of Apple's first new device in five years looked more like an event from the fashion world rather than the tech world. This time, there weren't long lines of faithful gadget lovers waiting for hours and days to buy the latest product from the Cupertino, California-based company.
Paris's Colette, London's Dover Street Market and Tokyo's Isetan are among the high-end department stores joining the global roll-out of the Apple Watch, which ranges in price from $349 to $17,000 for a gold version. Those shops, plus an undisclosed number of authorised resellers, may be the only places where people can actually buy the new smartwatch. Apple Stores are only showcasing the device, and the company is urging customers to place orders online.
"Classic fashion industry play," Howard Feller, a partner at MMG Advisors, an investment bank that specialises in retail, jewellery and fashion, said of the Apple Watch introduction. "Every one of those locations are where trends are set, where new brands are introduced... Everything from the fashion world trickles down from there."
Angela Ahrendts, Apple's retail and online sales chief, has directed staff across eight countries and Hong Kong to send shoppers to its website to buy the device, which has a touch-screen display and works in tandem with an iPhone for messaging, directions and other applications. Initially, the Apple Watch wouldn't be available in Apple Stores for purchase on the first day, she said in a video that emerged this week.
Customers have been able to schedule demonstrations of the watch in Apple Stores since April 10, when online pre-orders began. The first batch of deliveries began arriving Friday. Shortly after Apple started accepting early orders, shipment times quickly pushed past that date, with some customers being promised delivery in four to six weeks or into June. Other buyers began receiving messages this week informing them that the watches were shipping earlier than expected.
"Our team is working to fill orders as quickly as possible based on the available supply and the order in which they were received," Apple said in a statement this week.
The Apple Watch roll-out is part of a bigger strategy to make the gadget more appealing to the fashion world. To that end, Apple bought a large advertising spread in the March issue of Vogue, displayed the device at the Colette during last fall's fashion week and hired a slew of fashion-industry executives, including Ahrendts, the former chief executive officer of Burberry Group.
Other high-end stores selling the watch Friday include The Corner Berlin and Maxfield in Los Angeles, which appears to be the only store in the US to get the watch. "There's an Apple Watch for you at Maxfield," the boutique says on its website.
The watch has also been previewed at other high-end stores, such as Galeries Lafayette in Paris, which sees more than 50 per cent of its traffic from Chinese and international tourists, according to Erinn Murphy, an analyst at Piper Jaffray Cos. "In some of these cities, whether it's Paris or London, you've got an incredible amount of global tourists shopping as well," Murphy said. "It helps reinforce the brand globally."
Sales of the Watch may reach almost 14 million this year, according to the average estimate of five analysts polled by Bloomberg. At Dover Street Market, appointments are required and purchases are limited to one per customer.
"They're going after the top because of the trickle-down effect," said Robin Lewis, CEO of The Robin Report and co-author of The New Rules of Retail: Competing in the World's Toughest Marketplace, which explores Apple's retail strategy. "Scarcity just creates greater, more intense demand."
At London's Dover Street Market, more than 20 people were in line about 20 minutes before opening Friday morning. Their fashion sense was a mixed bag as geeks and chics mingled - though mostly geeks, including one guy in yellow sneakers and a fanny pack.
At Isetan, located in Tokyo's Shinjuku shopping district, the Apple Watch display is located on the ground floor, where jewellery and cosmetics are sold, near Cartier and Prada displays. Through April 26, however, Isetan is only selling watches to customers who reserved them in advance, according to its website.
At iSpace, a reseller of Apple products at The Place shopping mall in Beijing, about 10 people were gathered for the 10 a m opening. The inventory didn't last long. Staff at the store said the entire stock of about 50 watches sold out within 90 minutes after the store opened its doors.
At many Apple stores around the world, the scenes were more subdued. About 10 people were outside the Apple Store on New York's Upper West Side on Friday morning shortly before it opened, with about half there to see the watch. Any hopes of buying one on the spot were quickly dashed. "This is the worst marketing ploy I've ever seen," said Nick Castro, a 33-year-old who works in advertising.
It won't always be like this, Apple has said. "We love our iconic, blockbuster launches that we do in the stores and have absolutely no fear you will see those" again, Ahrendts said in that video message.
That's not surprising to Carmine Gallo, author of The Apple Experience, a book that looks at the company's customer service strategy. "Apple Store leaders are too smart to lose sight of the fact that those launches make Apple unique in the world of retail," he wrote in an e-mail.
With Takashi Amano and Bloomberg News
© Bloomberg
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