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Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

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Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#221

Post by listenallyall »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #73
bredren wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw Ron Johnson speak around 2012 in San Mateo. He oversaw the initial rise of the Apple Store. I remember him saying Jobs told him there was basically an unlimited budget to make the stores a success. The difference is it only took Apple three years to reach $1B in annual sales.

> The difference is it only took Apple three years to reach $1B in annual sales. It took far more than that to earn the trust of consumers. Microsoft decided to sit back, collect rent on Windows/Office, and let other business do the hard work of customer service and let their customers deal with malware on their laptops. Contrast with Apple, who put customer service front and center, opened stores that my parents cou…

> Microsoft decided to sit back

Weak take. Microsoft was very active with numerous mobile offerings -- Pen Computing, Windows Mobile, Tablet and Embedded Windows. You can debate why they ultimately failed -- too early, insufficient hardware, too Windows-centric -- but @billg was never content just "collecting rent" and not innovating, especially in mobile, internet, and connectivity.

Your bias is obvious when you describe MSFT as "collecting rent" (negative connotation) and AAPL as "rewarded with profits" (positive).

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#222

Post by skuthus »

I guess I can say this now.

I worked for 5 years at the most revenue-generating microsoft store in the world. We were near the official Microsoft campus. The short answer is that things started to change internally around 2017, where stores changed their hiring requirements and excised a lot of their top talent in favor of lower-paid, less enthusiastic management and employees. This has been a steady downhill process since - It is a shame that the stores will no longer be. I loved my time working there, and loved the people and connections I made there both personally and professionally. We genuinely went out of our way to make customers happy, no matter the cost. It was inevitable that kind of goodwill would be snuffed out by profit motive eventually.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#223

Post by BoorishBears »

M5x7wI3CmbEem10 wrote: post #215
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #21

This is a real shame. We have (had?) a Microsoft Store in the Triangle (Raleigh-Durham), and my visits to that store were always really enjoyable. I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky. Microsoft did a really good job of hiring diverse talent, and every store-clerk I ever interacted with was smart, nice, and seemed to…

that’s the first I’ve heard of that area called “the triangle.” mind sharing what it’s significant for and what kind of person would fit? I’ve considered moving to the SE for better weather and job opportunities as a new grad.

I've gotten more in depth into this in the path, but I don't recommend people move to "the triangle"

(I honestly don't know why that name has stuck, sure historically they may be linked, but unless you want to deal with ungodly traffic every day, you're probably not going to be going between Raleigh and Durham)

Durham has some serious unresolved problems with crime, Raleigh and Durham both have problems with traffic, the tech scene is not that robust, house prices are on a rocketship shaped trajectory and frankly it feels like a bubble.

I think the core of my complaints has generally been, if you want suburban sprawl, you can go literally anywhere on the eastern seaboard. There are safer cities than Durham, there are cities like Raleigh that don't have the same problems with growth it's facing

If you want a "city feeling", RDU isn't it. Raleigh downtown is how many blocks? Not many. Public transport is terrible so you're going to need a car if you can't contain your life in it.

Maybe if you have a family to settle down and strong earning power and good savings it's a good idea (that is to say, maybe I don't know, I still wouldn't). Or you're on the opposite end of the spectrum and have a lower income and really young with more interest in living in a "happening" place.

But for a new grad in tech or something in demand, your earning power is squandered on suppressed salaries (and no, it's not that mindboggling cheap to live there, especially not with all the money flowing in from all around the country), you're a little bit older than the point where most people are more interested in how many breweries per square mile there are. It just wasn't an appealing proposition to me.

I moved back to NYC and now I make 1.5x what I did there, but my living expenses have not risen nearly 1.5x, and I've probably saved up in 6 months more than I did in 1 year there... at that point you can afford a few nice vacations a year to make up for the weather

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#224

Post by pankajdoharey »

reaperducer wrote: post #118
philshem wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made several warranty claims in-store, and they went above and beyond to help me out, even when my grounds for a claim were kinda shaky. Maybe having a physical store that lowers the barrier for making warranty claims, especially “shaky” ones, isn’t a profit maker. ;)

Maybe having a physical store that lowers the barrier for making warranty claims, especially “shaky” ones, isn’t a profit maker. Cost to fix a shaky piece of kit: $100 Future sale made because someone is happy with your service: $1,000 While I like to blame this sort of myopic thinking on SV, it seems like an entire generation, or two, has forgotten that if you make someone happy today, you've made a customer for lif…

For car sales it makes sense because with car sales, comes car repair and service. And this is where the dealers make money individual car sales are not that profitable.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#225

Post by sharkjacobs »

rschapman wrote: post #209
josephpmay wrote: post #16

I think one point people are missing: Apple stores, even if they exist mainly to promote the brand, are MASSIVELY profitable. In fact, they are one of the most profitable store chains in the world. By contract, I believe that Microsoft was always running most of their stores at a loss. Even for a massive company like Microsoft, continuously running an unprofitable division is hard to maintain.

That's interesting to hear. Do you have inside knowledge on that? A former colleague in the HR space worked for Apple retail said that many of them were actually not profitable on the whole. They served lots of purposes but most of the value was intangible and not revenue driven. She/I may be wrong but it's counter to what I was told.

There was a study which was in the news cycle[1] a few years ago that claimed that Apple stores were the most profitable retail space by square foot.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/29/here-are-the-retailers-that-...

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#226

Post by deanCommie »

listenallyall wrote: post #221
lotsofpulp wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The difference is it only took Apple three years to reach $1B in annual sales. It took far more than that to earn the trust of consumers. Microsoft decided to sit back, collect rent on Windows/Office, and let other business do the hard work of customer service and let their customers deal with malware on their laptops. Contrast with Apple, who put customer service front and center, opened stores that my parents cou…

> Microsoft decided to sit back Weak take. Microsoft was very active with numerous mobile offerings -- Pen Computing, Windows Mobile, Tablet and Embedded Windows. You can debate why they ultimately failed -- too early, insufficient hardware, too Windows-centric -- but @billg was never content just "collecting rent" and not innovating, especially in mobile, internet, and connectivity. Your bias is obvious when you des…

None of these products were for consumers.

Even on the business side, Microsoft never understood or cared about their users (besides maybe Word and Excel users), and marketed towards CEOs and COMPANIES.

see: Sharepoint which is the most financially successful Microsoft product ever, yet every end user despises it.

They never tried or cared to work backwards from a consumer user or what they wanted, they just started from "how do we make billions of dollars from licensing fees".

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#227

Post by makecheck »

DJBunnies wrote: post #4

These stores always seemed like a desperate attempt to copy apple. Which would be fine if they had product lines that were interesting. But they don't.

The copying was so weirdly precise, too; like down to the table layouts, T-shirts and lanyards. It’s as if they couldn’t pinpoint what made Apple stores successful and were afraid to change any detail in their copies.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#228

Post by jedieaston »

nonrecursive wrote: post #164
sterwill wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That may be the case. I rarely go inside my local mall (Southpoint, Durham NC), but on sunny weekends the Apple store was often jam-packed with people. So busy that customers had a hard time getting through the door. Sales people talking non-stop and processing orders as fast as possible. There was a Microsoft store inside the main mall building, just a few minutes away. I walked by it a few times, but it was usually…

Good god the Southpoint Apple store is terrible. I went there once because I wanted to buy a new iPad and apple pencil so I could participate in a digital painting workshop the next day, and they wanted me to wait 45 minutes before they would help me. I said that I wasn't going to wait that long and hopefully wasn't an asshole about it (it's never cool to be a jerk to retail employees!) and they did manage to ring me…

I had a similar experience a couple years ago with a $2k MacBook Pro, except they did the whole spiel.

“No, please! I want to give you money. Can I please give you money now?”

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#229

Post by m3kw9 »

Went in to a MS store just once ever. Before I go in, I always ask myself what have I not seen in windows already? Touch screen with a windows, not very hard to predict how it is same as using a pointer. That VR demo? I’m not gonna wait and look stupid. Maybe they failed to sell intrigue compared to Apple stores. Their products has mystique to it when they first come out and you always want to try it.

Re: Microsoft to permanently close its retail stores

#230

Post by PaulWaldman »

This is disappointing because the Microsoft stores seemed to be the only retail B&Ms that carried premium Windows hardware. Aside from a few outliers, stores like Best Buy tend to focus on volume Windows machines (Inspiron, IdealPad, Pavillion). What's the alternative, buying three computers online and returning the two you don't like?
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