Department of Déjà Vu: Last Microsoft Retail Store Foray Was a Bust
Displaying BoomTown’s advanced age and elephantine cache of meaningless tech memories, after news yesterday that the software giant was plunging into the retail market, I was surprised to find little mention that Microsoft’s last store effort that ended in failure in 2001.
That’s not to say it’s a particularly good or bad idea to hire a former Dreamworks and Wal-mart exec named David Porter (pictured here) as vice president of retail stores, to create Microsoft-branded stores, as the company announced yesterday, "to create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience."
While Microsoft (MSFT) sells most of its consumer products via big-box retail stores like Best Buy (BBY) and the retail market for just about everything is weak, Apple (AAPL) has definitively proven that a well-designed retail store can be a powerful marketing tool.
The visually stunning and infectiously fun Apple stores, in fact, have been an important part of its recent surge in mainstream consumer appeal, becoming hubs of activity and even social life in its mostly big-city locations.
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