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posted by martyb on Tuesday June 30 2020, @06:56PM   Printer-friendly
from the if-you-build-it dept.

Microsoft’s “new approach” to retail stores: Closing them forever:

Microsoft's retail stores, like many retailers throughout the nation, have been closed for months due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. If you were hoping to visit one again as restrictions in your state ease up, however, you're out of luck: the Microsoft Store is done for good.

The company announced the closure today, amusingly, as the Microsoft Store taking "a new approach to retail," by which it means "not actually operating retail stores." Although four locations—in London, New York City, Sydney, and Microsoft's Redmond, Washington, campus—will remain open, they will become "experience centers," where one can see, touch, and play with Microsoft products but not actually purchase any.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:16PM (6 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:16PM (#1014765)

    children, teenagers, and adults no longer use the mall to truly socialize like we did in the past,

    And good riddance to bad garbage.

    I never went to a mall to socialize. Hell, I don't even remember going to malls *at all* until I was in my twenties. And thank goodness for that. It sounds like a truly soul-sucking experience.

    Where I come from we went to coffee shops, bars, the streets and places like this [wikipedia.org].

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:44PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 30 2020, @11:44PM (#1014775)

    Thanks for letting us know.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:24AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:24AM (#1014820)

      Wasn't it Ballard who wrote that "Let's go shopping" is a statement only uttered by a madman?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @04:46AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @04:46AM (#1014874)

      You are welcome. I'm happy to help.

  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:44AM (2 children)

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday July 01 2020, @01:44AM (#1014833) Journal

    Originally, malls weren't supposed to be primarily commercial. They were "malls", not "shopping malls". But the commercialism made the money, and very soon that dominated so completely it became the only reason to visit.

    When I was a kid, I was dazzled by all the shiny mirrored surfaces and pretty lights inside the malls, as well as the impressive hugeness. There was nothing else quite like the inside of a large indoor shopping mall. My favorite places were the bookstores, the video game arcade, and the computer store where I looked and looked at that Commodore Amiga, but never could figure any justifications that persuaded me let alone my parents that it was worth buying. Now though, malls are meh. Even then, there were hints, like that 90% of the stores in the mall were of zero interest to me. Women's clothing was at least comprehensible, but stores that sold useless decorative knick-knacks I found difficult t0 believe that they had enough customers to keep them in business.

    At a few major indoor malls, I've tried expressing this to mall management, but it's hopeless. The people staffing the mall offices are dullards. I suggested they list the surrounding stores on their mall directories, and they nearly had seizures. Might hurt the business of their rent paying shops! As if shoppers don't know about all the nearby stores. I also suggested that they put price tags on the furniture in the food court, and they acted as if putting such items up for sale was incomprehensible. Sure, the industrial strength chairs and tables are hella expensive, but some people might want to buy them anyway. And those were just the really mild suggestions. Ideas such as adding apartments to the mall were evidently so radical and raised so many questions that they were absolutely impossible. Kinda makes you wonder how a skating rink became a traditional feature. Shopping malls have hammered out and tuned a formula that worked, and they don't want to change a thing. They are stuck in very deep ruts, and it seems only being whopped with the clue bat of commercial failure and bankruptcy can bring changes and improvements.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:31AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 01 2020, @03:31AM (#1014868)

      Shopping malls have hammered out and tuned a formula that worked, and they don't want to change a thing.

      Well, they have changed a thing, but that was toward the worse, about 30 years ago.

      Back then there was Sears, two upscale department stores, Woolworths with two restaurants as anchors. There were pet stores, music stores, snack bars, duck ponds, bird cages, a video arcade, water fountains, a post office and a shoe repair place, a pharmacy, a computer store, a tobacco store and restaurants in the local mall. All those have disappeared from the main mall, the food places have been forced to move to a food court or surrounding properties. The main mail has lost most its color and is a black / grey / white agglomeration of (women's) clothing stores. There is a bit of color left in form of the big four phone networks' stores and a children's clothing store.

      Back in the 1990s, they requested the local bus company to not serve the mall. They didn't want the wrong class to show up. They also harassed young people walking around while accommodating older "mall-walkers". They alienated their future customers.

      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Wednesday July 01 2020, @10:55AM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) on Wednesday July 01 2020, @10:55AM (#1014940) Journal

        > Back in the 1990s, they requested the local bus company to not serve the mall. They didn't want the wrong class to show up.

        Yeah, I too eventually learned of that attitude of theirs. Active hostility towards pedestrians, kids, and anyone else who didn't look like a big shopper. They actually liked the oceans of parking space surrounding the malls acting as a barrier to such "undesirables", and wouldn't hear of such ideas as building connecting corridors to make it easier to walk to and from the mall. Bigotry against the poor.

        The strip malls that put up "no loitering" signs lost my business. Such signs give the place an air of menacing enforcement of petty rules. Teens may have to put up with that crap at school, but they sure as heck don't have to patronize stores with those attitudes.

        One other thing I found very weird was the slowness of the average computer store in getting connected to the Internet. What do you mean Best Buy and CompUSA don't have free WiFI? Don't have their floor computers connected? WTF?