Apple Inc picks Maker Maxity Mall, Mumbai to open its first store in India, the mall is co-owned by Reliance Industries. The store will expand over three floors with over 20,000 sq ft of area. A team of Apple US is supervising the design and layouts of the store which is expected to open next year in September. According to the reposts, one story will serve as the service centre, while one will be an experience centre.
Apple’s flagship store will be almost thrice the size of Apple’s current franchise store. Currently, ‘Aptronix’ Apple Premium Reseller store covers 8,000 sq ft of area over two floors in Mumbai’s High Street Phoenix Mall.
How are the franchised stores different from Apply Flagship stores?
The tech giant Apple is not only focused on selling the products through its stores but believes in giving customers an experience. In a flagship store you’ll find huge sitting areas, indoor trees, large marketing screens, and developers and community events. Moreover, flagship stores offers ‘Apple Watch Studio’ where customers can mix and match the watch and bands to create their own unique pair. “The plan for opening owned stores will certainly help Apple in giving a controlled experience of its devices and services as it intends and designed them to be. In a third-party retail environment, many such things cannot be controlled by the brand. This will only add to the strong premium positioning Apple enjoys in the country,” Navkendar Singh, Research Director at IDC India had told news agency IANS earlier.
Why Apple did not launch its Flagship stores sooner?
Apple was not capable of opening the flagship stores in India as its hands were tied due to the rule that was earlier followed in India wherein it was mandatory for companies applying for 51% or above FDI via single brand retailing to source 30% of the products they sell in India locally. In August, the rule received an amendment to include exports and contract manufacturing in the above mentioned 30% local sourcing over 5 year period.
Apple added, “We love our customers in India and we’re eager to serve them online and in-store with the same experience and care that Apple customers around the world enjoy. We appreciate the support and hard work by Prime Minister Modi and his team to make this possible and we look forward to one day welcoming customers to India’s first Apple retail store. It will take us some time to get our plans underway and we’ll have more to announce at a future date,”.
