Rumor: Unique display to showcase Apple Watch at high-end Paris department store
In yet another sign of how Apple may market its upcoming wearable device to the high-end fashion market, the Apple Watch is rumored to be featured in a display inside Paris's Galeries Lafayette.
The high-end department store currently has an area for a stand covered in white, which Mac4Ever claims is where Apple is building a display for the forthcoming Apple Watch. Construction is said to have begun earlier this month and will be completed in time for the wrist-worn device's April launch.
According to the report, Apple is planning to set up similar displays at other high-end shopping areas, including spots along Avenue des Champs-Elysees. It was also said that Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts is personally overseeing the project.
More details on the site were also posted by FashionMag, who noted that the space on the first floor was previously a food court area and some small shops.
Apple is expected to rethink some of its retail strategy for the forthcoming launch of the Apple Watch. For example, major physical changes are said to be coming to the company's retail outlets, thanks to a collaboration between Ahrendts and Apple's chief designer Jony Ive.
The company has also taken on new promotion tactics, going as far as to hold events with partners to showcase the Apple Watch, such as a Fashion Week display done with Colette in Paris last week.
The high-end department store currently has an area for a stand covered in white, which Mac4Ever claims is where Apple is building a display for the forthcoming Apple Watch. Construction is said to have begun earlier this month and will be completed in time for the wrist-worn device's April launch.
According to the report, Apple is planning to set up similar displays at other high-end shopping areas, including spots along Avenue des Champs-Elysees. It was also said that Apple retail chief Angela Ahrendts is personally overseeing the project.
More details on the site were also posted by FashionMag, who noted that the space on the first floor was previously a food court area and some small shops.
Apple is expected to rethink some of its retail strategy for the forthcoming launch of the Apple Watch. For example, major physical changes are said to be coming to the company's retail outlets, thanks to a collaboration between Ahrendts and Apple's chief designer Jony Ive.
The company has also taken on new promotion tactics, going as far as to hold events with partners to showcase the Apple Watch, such as a Fashion Week display done with Colette in Paris last week.
Comments
But it's only a consumer electronic that doesn't really do anything, so why would they want to showcase it like it's jewelry?¡
Oh, it's so fugly, just like everything else in Paris. What does Paris know about fashion? Who pays any attention to what things look like in Paris? And oh battery life. Who will pay attention to anything made of gold that doesn't light up all the time and tell you your blood sugar? Or start your self driving electric car? And look at all the inaccuracies in the article, bad grammar, no citations to facts. Oh, these prices, Apple, isn't going to sell any of these, its a dismal failure, doomed, Tim sucks.¡
That should about cover it. Next?
Oh, it's so fugly, just like everything else in Paris. What does Paris know about fashion? Who pays any attention to what things look like in Paris? And oh battery life. Who will pay attention to anything made of gold that doesn't light up all the time and tell you your blood sugar? Or start your self driving electric car? And look at all the inaccuracies in the article, bad grammar, no citations to facts. Oh, these prices, Apple, isn't going to sell any of these, its a dismal failure, doomed, Tim sucks.¡
That should about cover it. Next?
Moto 270 is round, therefore better. Also Apple just rips off t3h g00gle. /s
Also, they killed off the features that were never announced, so super doomed. Death spiral: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/19/rumor-spiral
Thank God for Gruber sometimes. He also too apart that WSJ story showing how ridiculous it is.
Oh, it's so fugly, just like everything else in Paris. What does Paris know about fashion? Who pays any attention to what things look like in Paris? And oh battery life. Who will pay attention to anything made of gold that doesn't light up all the time and tell you your blood sugar? Or start your self driving electric car? And look at all the inaccuracies in the article, bad grammar, no citations to facts. Oh, these prices, Apple, isn't going to sell any of these, its a dismal failure, doomed, Tim sucks.¡
That should about cover it. Next?
That was almost funny
Moto 270 is round, therefore better. Also Apple just rips off t3h g00gle. /s
Also, they killed off the features that were never announced, so super doomed. Death spiral: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2015/02/19/rumor-spiral
Apple are perfect they do nothing evil, don't dodge tax , don't try to steal other's IP , cannot do anything wrong coz they're from USA, get the picture for like the millionth time bla bla yawn, going to do some ironing to cheer myself up , give me strength have a god damn opinion of your own. Actually nvm I was wrong all hail Apple no matter what they do LOLOL .
Ps I am actually an Apple fan but live outside of their A hole
Well one thing's for sure, it won't be tethered to a table with a security tag.
How to display the watch without compromising the Apple experience is at least a big a challenge as the watch itself.
What I would like to know is that considering the range of products in this category, from a watch that one might be happy to replace every two years in a cycle similar to the iPhone, to watches possibly costing thousands of dollars, whether the internals could readily be upgraded to meet the specifications of new products. Suppose Apple in two years time, produces electronics/sensors/batteries that are vastly superior to the initial offering, one might be quite reluctant to replace a gold model. I suspect that upgradeability will be a selling point.
Why upgrade? Just sell two year old device on eBay and buy a new gold Watch. There will be a HUGE market for used Watches!! And being of gold they will hold value pretty well I suspect.
GL has to be one of the most over-rated, overpriced, over-crowded stores anywhere in the world. Reminds of Macy's or Bloomingdale's in Manhattan: these were must-shop-at destinations once upon a time, but they're now overrun with foreign -- in the case of GL, Japanese -- tourists.
Everything is haphazardly displayed, lines are long, bathrooms are filthy, and there's no place to sit anywhere.
I don't go into one of these places anymore.
Well one thing's for sure, it won't be tethered to a table with a security tag.
I guarantee that it will be.
My sources have told me other up market retailers such as Walmart and Asda will also have the Apple Watch on display between other high end products like Evian and Nutella.
Dobby.
Avenue de Champs-Élysées. A far cry from Fry's.
Galerie Lafayette is on Chateaudun, not the Champs Elysee; not really close to it either.
Or like Yogi Berra said "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
Or, "No one in New York drove... there was too much traffic." Phillip J. Fry, Futurama, "The Lesser of Two Evils"
Oh, it's so fugly, just like everything else in Paris. What does Paris know about fashion? Who pays any attention to what things look like in Paris? And oh battery life. Who will pay attention to anything made of gold that doesn't light up all the time and tell you your blood sugar? Or start your self driving electric car? And look at all the inaccuracies in the article, bad grammar, no citations to facts. Oh, these prices, Apple, isn't going to sell any of these, its a dismal failure, doomed, Tim sucks.¡
That should about cover it. Next?
I think you underestimate the trolls and haters...
I've head that if you want to wear it outside to see how it looks in the sun, Apple's fine with that...
Supposedly you'll need to make an appointment to have an Apple Store employee show you the device.
Apparently they designed a new display for the Apple Watch:
The next day, I visited Ive in his studio. The table previously covered with a flat cloth was now uncovered: it was a glass-topped Apple Watch display cabinet, accessible to staff from below, via a descending, motorized flap, like the ramp at the rear of a cargo plane. Ive has begun to work with Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, on a redesign—as yet unannounced—of the Apple Stores. These new spaces will surely become a more natural setting for vitrines filled with gold (and perhaps less welcoming, at least in some corners, to tourists and truants). Apple had not, overnight, become an élite-oriented company—and it would sell seventy-five million iPhones in the final quarter of 2014, many of them in China—but I wondered how rational, and pure of purpose, one can make the design of a V.I.P. area. Ive later told me that he had overheard someone saying, “I’m not going to buy a watch if I can’t stand on carpet.”
This interview with Jony Ive, from The New Yorker, is filled with little details. I haven't seen it mentioned on this site.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/02/23/shape-things-come