Robert X. Cringely says Microsoft retail stores are a brilliant move:
The big Microsoft news this week, at least from the press it has received, is Redmond’s decision to open a chain of stores. Nearly all the pundits think this is stupid, while I think it was merely inevitable, given the nature of current Microsoft management, which seems to be more and more from Bentonville, Arkansas, home of Wal-Mart.
…Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner…spent his entire pre-Microsoft career rising through the ranks at Wal-Mart. I’ve interviewed the guy and he’s smart and a lot tougher than he looks. Microsoft has drawn heavily from Bentonville and for good reason: those Wal-Mart folks sure know how to make and manage money. […]
So it seems inevitable to me that as Microsoft is operated more and more by executives from a giant retailer, that Microsoft will try doing some giant retailing of its own. And sure enough they are doing just that through this new plan to open Microsoft stores – a plan that could equally be laid at the feet of Apple as yet another Microsoft tactic copied from Cupertino.
But Cringely points out that when Apple opened stores it did so because it needed distribution; Microsoft doesn’t. In fact, retail stores could cut into the sales of resellers. But…
I doubt that Microsoft will be actually trying to sell much stuff, and what they do sell will be at full retail unlike everyone else. It’s like buying wine at the winery: you never get a deal, but the samples are free.
So you can try out that cool game computer at Microsoft but actually BUY it at Best Buy, just as you would have before.
Why even do it, then? Why have these stores?
Propaganda.
Phil Schiller of Apple made the point back in January when he explained that Apple stores had 400,000 visitors per day or the equivalent of 20 Macworld shows EVERY DAY. Microsoft wants the same thing. They want to bypass the press machine that they feel has tainted users against Windows Vista, making sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Windows 7.
If Microsoft can achieve that one goal – just that one – then the Microsoft stores will have been worth doing even if they never have a dollar of retail sales.
Cringely doesn’t stop there. He goes on into some AMAZINGLY SPECIFIC details on how Microsoft should restructure itself to shed those 30,000-50,000 jobs to become smaller but stronger, more focused, agile, and better able to compete on a level playing field.
RELATED — Farhad Manjoo at Slate weighs in on the Microsoft retail store move. He says they ought to copy Apple, “And I mean a straight-up facsimile—copy it relentlessly, unabashedly, and completely.”
…its upcoming Windows 7 looks to be a wonderful OS. What Microsoft needs now is a way to get that message across—and without coming off as needy and defensive. A chain of retail stores is an expensive way to reintroduce your wares to customers. But if the stores are well-designed, they’ll be much more effective than commercials.