Abandoned.
Chris Matyszczyk / ZDNet
The first thing I saw were these words: “Build your personal brand.”
This is something that Microsoft did not understand for too long. His brand was not personal. Instead, it was big and cold, something Apple took full advantage of.
Finally, Microsoft got the hint that humanity may be a good thing. Surprisingly, it even started opening stores, most in locations close to Apple stores. All to coincide with the glory that was Windows 7.
Now, though, Microsoft is closing almost all of its stores, a quirky admission of, well, what exactly is it? That the company desperately needed to save $ 450 million, the amount it is officially scoring? Is that physical store dead? That he coronavirus will it last for years? That Microsoft simply cannot do what Apple can do?
Since the announcement, I have wondered what state Microsoft has left its stores in. Have they already been dismantled? Or do they just stay there, sad?
So I walked over to a Bay Area store and looked inside to see. In fact, there was an instant invocation to enhance your personal brand by uploading your photo to your head on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn. He stood there like a sad armadillo in a desert of despair.
A sign in the window said that the store was closed due to COVID-19. Not a word that it wouldn’t open again. Never.
The tables were devoid of products, although some of the shelves still appeared to contain accessory boxes. Or maybe accessory boxes with nothing inside.
The Xbox Game Pass screen featured two solitary controllers and some cables.
Brand building is not easy.
Chris Matyszczyk / ZDNet
Where there used to be surface books, there were now two overturned stools, bookends as it passed. The mobile table was the same, a Samsung relic never sold, and conversations that were sometimes entertaining.
At least that’s what I found often when I visited one of these stores. The staff was, for the most part, attractive. And since the stores were rarely crowded, they had time to talk and tell them about their lives, their philosophies, and their other jobs.
Why, just last year, a vendor from the Microsoft store gave me a very clever reason to switch from iPhone to Samsung. It was about having a growth mindset, he said. This is something that now, in the case of Microsoft, does not include these stores.
It is easy to think that this is a silly decision. Having stores allows people to see, touch, feel and play with their products. It also creates a physical presence, one that tells people that you are an important, and also an attractive, brand.
Microsoft claims that closing these stores heralds “a new approach to retail.” Because no one had thought of offering online customer support. The company insisted that most of its products are digital anyway.
However, Redmond has spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make sure that sports advertisers finally realize that Surface is not an iPad. It has tried to impress with dual screen phones, or tablets, or whatever.
And now you think that a physical presence is not worth it? Perhaps Microsoft is proven right, as COVID-19 devastates physical commerce for much longer than some anticipate. In fact, Apple has just announced that it will re-close 30 of its stores due to the persistence and growth of the virus.
Perhaps, however, Microsoft simply got tired of its stores never having the prestige, or at least the palpable buzz, of Apple stores.
It must be difficult for employees to be in a relatively quiet store and be able to see people walking around carrying Apple bags and even hear the noise of the nearby Apple store.
As I walked away from this sad and neglected graveyard, I wondered why Apple is so much better at being late to a market and still managing to define it. Something that, in this case, Microsoft simply could not do.
A couple of weeks ago, I went to the nearby Apple store to see what was going on there.
Then everything was silent. This time, I could see that business had improved. Unlike two weeks ago, a police officer was discreetly perched on a seat in front of the store. Inside, there were far more people than I’d ever seen before. Outside, quite a few people wanted to enter.
In front of the Apple store, an employee was busy sweeping with rare determination. Apple is here to stay, right?
However, I wonder what would happen to the United States and the world if Apple also decided that it was no longer worth having stores. Would there be any shopping malls and main streets left?
Or would Microsoft suddenly look up and decide this was the perfect time to go to the rescue?
