“Can we show you the latest in nothing?”
OK, that headline might be a tad misleading. You can place an order online and the “salespeople” can call(!!) tech support for you, but the store doesn’t have any inventory. Need a new monitor today? Forget it. Have to wait for it to be delivered. Yeah, this is a good idea.
This week, we were lucky enough to make it over to the brand spankin’ new Dell store located at NorthPark Center in Dallas, TX to snap some pictures for you. If you missed the news a little over a month ago, Dell announced that they would begin opening up flagship stores around the country to try and keep up with Apple. So far they have announced that they would first open two locations in Dallas and the Palisades Center in West Nyack, NY (which both have Apple Store locations).
And then there’s this article from when they announced opening these stores which provides five reasons this concept is really dumb.
This is no different than the old Gateway stores, right??
Yes, I was going to say the same thing. Gateway had “showrooms” – I could pick up the computer I wanted, but I had to order it and it took several days to deliver.
The Gateway store near me in Atlanta, GA did have some inventory (Monitors, Printers and non-customizable Laptops and Desktops), but the smartest feature of the Gateway store was that had an in-house tech support person so for the price of a few gallons of gas you could avoid that painful phone call with someone half-way around the world.
Don’t they do this to add tax to online purchases? Having a physical store in the state even if you can’t buy anything forces sales tax.
Our (now closed) Gateway store only had demo models. The only way you could get anything out of the store was by theft.
I wonder why it closed?…..not.
Gateway’s primary reason for buying eMachines was so that it could use eMachine’s existing connections with CompUSA, BestBuy, etc. to establish itself in those store, so it could dump its own stores.
Dude! You’re getting… nothing!
Let’s be careful now, isn’t Dell a sponsor of Cranky Geeks? 🙂
Kind of reminds me of that scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin, when the kid in the eBay store wanted to buy the pair of boots.
“Can I help you?”
“Yeah, these are wonderful. I’ll take these.”
“Thanks, they are. They’re great.”
“I don’t actually sell anything here. I just sell them on eBay.”
“So, I guess I’ll just give you some money… and you can give me these shoes and…”
“Yes. I’d just rather buy them from you straight up.”
“Yeah, I know. I wish it could be that easy, but…”
Interesting and could work…
If they give FREE 2 day shipping,
Can I buy some nothing with my nothing? I give you a thouasand nothings for your nothing gigahertz machine.
Gee, and Gateway wonders why their stores failed and only served to drain more cash and frustrate (potential) customers?
I’ll chime in with the others, that this Dell store sounds exactly like the old Gateway store that lasted about 8 months here in my town. You can see some pretty displays, but you gotta wait a couple weeks to get your hands on a real computer of your own…. stupido.
Of all companies, I can’t believe this is coming from Dell. They generally kick butt and take names later.
Give us time to see if this format will be successful. We think they will. The store in Dallas is off to a fast start. What you may not be aware of is this store is based on the same premise of about 160 kiosks in the US, and some in Japan and Canada. We’ve successfully operated those for many years — we know there are customers out there who want to see the product, and have it delivered to their homes …
Also, by the looks of some of the other pictures, there’s plenty of interest in Dallas right now.
One difference between Gateway/Apple and Dell is that there’s no conflict with other stores who carry same-branded product.
Keep your comments coming.