I meant why did APPLE take so long to open a Canadian store. I had always thought that they would have done so much earlier.
I'm not familliar with the Futureshops. What do they do differently from the parent ship?
Canada is a hard market to figure out from the outside. There is a lot of online shopping and quite a bit cross-border shopping in cities near the us border. Toronto makes sense for the first location, being a metropolis of a few million and a massive design center, plenty of creatives will keep that and future Apple stores busy.
Futureshop is a store identical to Bestbuy, other than that futureshop works on commission. Futureshop has been around in canada for about 20 years, Bestbuy bought it out in the early 90's. After Futureshop became the biggest and most predominant name in electronics in canada sales started to dip due to the large corporate image (people knew Bestbuy owned it). Bestbuy (the chain) opened in 2002, i think, to create the illusion of a larger than it's self (read: American) chain competition, hoping allegiances or curiosity would bolster sales while never needing to fear that money is going elsewhere. People may stay with Futureshop because it's "Canadian", yet others may go the bestbuy because it's new and different.
Today they market it with/against each other each carry 90% of the exact same merchandise with some individual chain exclusives. The bestbuy chain happens to carry the full apple line. Both carry iPod and accessories.
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[iOriginally posted by melgross [/i]
I meant why did APPLE take so long to open a Canadian store. I had always thought that they would have done so much earlier.
I'm not familliar with the Futureshops. What do they do differently from the parent ship?
Canada is a hard market to figure out from the outside. There is a lot of online shopping and quite a bit cross-border shopping in cities near the us border. Toronto makes sense for the first location, being a metropolis of a few million and a massive design center, plenty of creatives will keep that and future Apple stores busy.
Futureshop is a store identical to Bestbuy, other than that futureshop works on commission. Futureshop has been around in canada for about 20 years, Bestbuy bought it out in the early 90's. After Futureshop became the biggest and most predominant name in electronics in canada sales started to dip due to the large corporate image (people knew Bestbuy owned it). Bestbuy (the chain) opened in 2002, i think, to create the illusion of a larger than it's self (read: American) chain competition, hoping allegiances or curiosity would bolster sales while never needing to fear that money is going elsewhere. People may stay with Futureshop because it's "Canadian", yet others may go the bestbuy because it's new and different.
Today they market it with/against each other each carry 90% of the exact same merchandise with some individual chain exclusives. The bestbuy chain happens to carry the full apple line. Both carry iPod and accessories.