Visiting My Microsoft 'Genius': The Retail Store Experience

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The upcoming wave of Microsoft Stores was touted at my local mall for months -- a location that also happens to have an Apple Store as well. Literally minutes after making my way through the throngs (no kidding) at the Apple location at my mall this weekend, I stepped into the much thinner clientele at the newly opened Microsoft Store. While the Windows company may be trying to mimic the Apple model in going straight to consumers with its cross-platform wares, the marketing mavens of Redmond are not following the Cupertino penchant for clean simplicity.

While The Apple Store is cluttered with people, the Microsoft Store is cluttered with signage. The walls literally transmit video of product. Both main side walls are video-fied, and the shelves of product pretty much start at the front door. This is more Best Buy than Bose in look and feel. The presence begs for comparison. Microsoft sets itself up for this with a good deal of mimicry. Rather than the blue-shirted Apple staffers (I am not sure who to call a "genius" anymore), Microsoft’s folks are multicolored, reflecting the main panes of the Windows logo. There is a Willy Wonka Oompa-Loompa vibe here.

Assuming that much of the Microsoft retail push would be around the upcoming reinvention of Windows in version 8, I expected the paned experience to be everywhere. I asked a staffer whether they had Windows 8 on display, since after all the developer’s and beta builds have been publicly available for months. “Yes, it is running over there,” he said as he pointed to a single diminutive tablet with an attached keyboard. Yup, that was it, kids. The biggest launch in Microsoft’s history, perhaps signaling whether the company and its market-dominant OS can remain relevant in the post-PC era, and they have it running on a single tablet on a counter in the back of their retail presence.     

The staffer handed me over to “Product Advisor” Ronny who trotted me through a demo of Win 8 so fast I thought he might have somewhere else to go. Showing me the app store and mainly focusing on its handling of music, Ronny did demo the synchronized features across his Windows Phone and desktop, when I asked about it. And in the end he succeeded unwittingly in getting me interested more in the phone iteration than the desktop because he was actually showing me how he used the mobile OS to manage his friendships.

When I did get my hands on one of the Nokias showing off the mobile OS I was impressed by how well Microsoft had broken from iOS and Android’s mimicry of it to a tiled model where live information is surfaced on the mobile screen, not just hidden behind icons. Alas, it is hard to sell the idea of a mobile OS when the front line of tables in the storefront has just a handful of diminutive phones. There is no hook to the signage -- no theme or organizing principle to the experience. The store doesn’t say anything about Microsoft the brand other than that it is embedded in a lot of products.  

There are incredible features and approaches hidden down in some of these Microsoft products and platforms. And yet, if the serviceable but uninspired retail presence is any indication, they are scrambling to find a song, a theme, a message -- or maybe just a brand -- to communicate them.  

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4 comments on "Visiting My Microsoft 'Genius': The Retail Store Experience ".

1. Jude Ellledge from Urban Glue
   

   commented on: October 8, 2012 at 4:42 p.m.
   Steve, Thanks for you observations. I am a lover of Apple. Being a retail designer tend to agree, but here is where I have experience the difference. The South Coast Plaza Store Costa Mesa CA is doing a fantastic job of integration into community (as with the other CA stores) I have spoken at the Microsoft store many times as a breakfast speaker and believe the way they are reaching local small businesses, NGOs and women owned businesses is very smart. This is a resource that is free to the general public. Good use of creating a public/private partnership. I do not see this happening in the Apple stores, in fact the crazy busy factor of the Apple store is a turn off.
2. Steve Smith from Mediapost
   

   commented on: October 8, 2012 at 4:55 p.m.
   Excellent point Jude. I didn't see any evidence of that in my mall walk, although I do know that Apple flagged me as a business owner/user during a purchase a long time ago and did try to pull me in to special training sessions, etc. But I have not seen much evidence of that lately. My wife yanked me from the Apple Store precisely because the mob was too intense. For Microsoft, b2b continues to be their strongest card.
3. Jude Ellledge from Urban Glue
   

   commented on: October 8, 2012 at 5:10 p.m.
   Yep Steve, many women have complained that Apple is not really a chick store, I did one on one training myself and found it way too distracting. Good retail design books feature stores void of customers, the real test is always a store under pressure with customers. To Microsofts credit, being a non retailer for so long they are constantly reviewing their appeal at store level, customer service another area that is paramount and could take a chapter out of the hospitality training techniques. Early mornings or evening is when you would see the breakout sessions in action. That's for being a great observer of retail spaces!
4. Brandon Meyers from Boingo Wireless
   

   commented on: October 13, 2012 at 12:46 a.m.
   Steve Smith's daily columns about retail and mobile are the best out there and it's not even close!

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