The joy of brick and mortar

It’s fashionable to point to Blockbuster and Borders and predict the death of retail stores at the hands of the technologically savvy NetFlixes and amazons.

What is impressive is in reverse how many tech companies have discovered the importance of a physical storefront. In Chicago last week, I saw the impressive Garmin store on Michigan Avenue. Microsoft has been opening stores across the Western part of the country.

Today, I bypassed the wildly popular Apple store at a local mall, and went into the Bose store and was blown away by the VideoWave experience in the store’s theatre. Even more impactful – there were another 10 stores including Clear and Sony’s on the mall’s “electronics and entertainment” listing and even more when you added in the “toys” category.

Ok, so Nokia has not been successful with many of its retail stores – but then you could argue that’s just symptomatic of the company’s need to upgrade the overall customer experience.

Apple’s stores are the new benchmark for the tech – and for the retail –industry because of their eye-popping revenue per square foot, customer sat etc. And  maybe even for retail banking for inspiring locations like this Citi branch.