Brick and mortar stores were one of the pillars of Apple's success outside the US. Before their creation it was virtually impossible to have direct contact with Apple and very difficult to give customers the exposure to products that they needed.
It was possibly the single most important move by the company to cement growth.
I always have trouble reconciling seemingly contradictory reports. Apple "remains one of the most successful brick-and-mortar retailers in the world with sales of $5,546 per square foot, according to recent research." But Mac sales are slumping, iPad sales are slumping, the Watch is a flop, iPhone sales are declining and losing market share according to analyst reports and market survey results. I guess I don't get it.
Many of those 'flop' reports are based on a drop in percents. And they don't always account for release dates etc. So they look at say the iPhone and they say 'iPhone sales are down from last quarter' and don't mention that 'last quarter' was the launch of the phone so yeah it's going to be high and then drop month to month after the first 3-4 and by the summer basically bottom out as folks wait for the new one. Or "IPad sales are down from this quarter last year" but not mention that this quarter last year was the release of the iPad Pro which was a month earlier this year and ended up in a different quarter and so on.
or they harbinger that sales are down 5% but fail to point out that that's still sales at like $500 million
"Its per-foot performance is likely due to a combination of online and offline sales, plus the value of its electronics."
Why on earth would the brick-and-mortar sales figures include online sales? How does that make any sense?
And what is meant by "plus the value of its electronics"?
What a strange sentence...
Exactly. If you include online sales thrn this $5k+ number is completely bogus. I bet that includes wireless carrier sales too. Using the same methodology, Amazon should open one retail store and claim $ billions per square foot. Yes "plus the value of its electronics" is extremely odd in this context
That's something for Apple's finance department to determine.
Does it count as an online purchase with a will-call fulfillment or is it a retail purchase at a bricks-and-mortar store?
I would say that the bricks-and-mortar retail staff should not get the credit for the sale, since they had nothing to do with the purchase. The bricks-and-mortar store is simply a fulfillment center at this point, no different than picking it up at a UPS distribution hub.
One thing is for sure: Apple cannot count it as both.
Apple wasn't counting.
oh I see! The typical anti-Apple bias. Wal-Mart, Target, everyone else can count their pickup orders but not Apple!!!!!!
"Its per-foot performance is likely due to a combination of online and offline sales, plus the value of its electronics."
Why on earth would the brick-and-mortar sales figures include online sales? How does that make any sense?
Because people order online and ship to store? Or, in the case of Apple, they reserve something in the store online and come to pick it up.
That's an online sale then, not a store sale.
Apparently thats not the case here or else it wouldn't have been mentioned.
It was mentioned by AppleInsider, or this research company I've never heard of, which doesn't make it true.
Apple takes a very pessimistic view for internal stats; I'd be very surprised if they counted an order online sale as a store sale said only because it was delivered to the store. It makes no sense.
Wasn’t Tiffany’s second when these recordings (relative to Apple) first started? And has Apple not been first at any point in the last decade and a half?
"Its per-foot performance is likely due to a combination of online and offline sales, plus the value of its electronics."
Why on earth would the brick-and-mortar sales figures include online sales? How does that make any sense?
Because people order online and ship to store? Or, in the case of Apple, they reserve something in the store online and come to pick it up.
That's an online sale then, not a store sale.
I don't know. I could see an online order that you ship to the store as getting credit for the store if the 1) they pull it from their local inventory, as is often the case when we look for in-store availability, or 2) if you actually payment—not just an authorization—is rendered at the store by a store employee.
Where was the sale actually made? Where did the customer hand over the credit card? In my opinion, that is where the sale was made. Where the sold item was delivered is a completed different stat.
I always have trouble reconciling seemingly contradictory reports. Apple "remains one of the most successful brick-and-mortar retailers in the world with sales of $5,546 per square foot, according to recent research." But Mac sales are slumping, iPad sales are slumping, the Watch is a flop, iPhone sales are declining and losing market share according to analyst reports and market survey results. I guess I don't get it.
Who said "Watch is a flop"? They've been top of the wearables class for some time now. It better better not be that Dvorak guy…
Especially not as it was that Dvorak guy who used to go on all the time about how Apple's retail stores did better per square foot than Tiffany's. So he knows this is a metric that shows Apple Retail is performing well. Especially as every major town in the US has at least one Apple Store, but how many have Tiffany's?
Of course, he also tends to claim anything they do will fail, although he claims at times that it's a deliberate attempt to wind up fanboys and drive clicks to his columns. So either he's cynically manipulating his readership, or he's claiming to cynically manipulate his readership to cover up the number of times he's been wrong. I suspect in reality it's a little from column A and a little from column B.
"Its per-foot performance is likely due to a combination of online and offline sales, plus the value of its electronics."
Why on earth would the brick-and-mortar sales figures include online sales? How does that make any sense?
And what is meant by "plus the value of its electronics"?
What a strange sentence...
Exactly. If you include online sales thrn this $5k+ number is completely bogus. I bet that includes wireless carrier sales too. Using the same methodology, Amazon should open one retail store and claim $ billions per square foot. Yes "plus the value of its electronics" is extremely odd in this context
It wouldn't include sales made by wireless carriers. For 2016, Apple reported that about 25% of its net sales came through its direct distribution channels (i.e. its retail stores, its online stores, and its direct sales force). Its total net sales were about $216 billion. So, ballpark, we're talking about $50 billion or so in sales through Apple's direct channels. This emarketer report - and that $5k+ number - relates to only a subset of those sales. Emarketer reports $29 billion in retail store sales for Apple for 2016. That's what's used to get to the $5,200 number for 2016. (The $5,400 number is from the trailing 12 months.)
I took "plus the value of its electronics" as part of the OP's explanation of why Apple's retail performance (as measured by the per-square-foot number) is so good. I think the OP was suggesting that Apple's products tend to be fairly pricey.
"$5,546 per square foot". . .over what period of time? I don't see where it says that.
As an engineer this also drives me nuts. Since there is no time unit attached it implies that it is a one-time figure. So a 10,000 square foot store gets $55.46 million in sales and on the average it closes? I know the linked article also has no time period so it's not exactly AI's fault. In fact, the problem seems to be retail industry-wide as nearly all of the reports omit the time specification.
Thinking about how the winter quarter brings in around as much as the other three quarters is pretty staggering. It should be around $5,500/sq. ft. annually. What is also amazing is the way the staffing scales to provide good services for product launches, and to do more with the same or less people to make customers happy.
Comments
It was possibly the single most important move by the company to cement growth.
or they harbinger that sales are down 5% but fail to point out that that's still sales at like $500 million
oh I see! The typical anti-Apple bias. Wal-Mart, Target, everyone else can count their pickup orders but not Apple!!!!!!
Apple takes a very pessimistic view for internal stats; I'd be very surprised if they counted an order online sale as a store sale said only because it was delivered to the store. It makes no sense.
Especially not as it was that Dvorak guy who used to go on all the time about how Apple's retail stores did better per square foot than Tiffany's. So he knows this is a metric that shows Apple Retail is performing well. Especially as every major town in the US has at least one Apple Store, but how many have Tiffany's?
Of course, he also tends to claim anything they do will fail, although he claims at times that it's a deliberate attempt to wind up fanboys and drive clicks to his columns. So either he's cynically manipulating his readership, or he's claiming to cynically manipulate his readership to cover up the number of times he's been wrong. I suspect in reality it's a little from column A and a little from column B.
I took "plus the value of its electronics" as part of the OP's explanation of why Apple's retail performance (as measured by the per-square-foot number) is so good. I think the OP was suggesting that Apple's products tend to be fairly pricey.