City’s Prime Commercial Hub chosen as the venue for the store
Ending all talks, Apple is opening its first Apple Store in Hong Kong. As revealed from an Apple insider, this Apple retail store will start its operations from September 24, 2011. This store will be operating from the crème retail and business district of Hong Kong, International Finance Center (IFC) Mall, as confirmed by Carolyn Wu, the Beijing-based Apple spokeswoman. The retail store will be sprawling over a 20,000 square feet area. This Apple Store location will be the fifth retail establishment of Apple in China.
The forthcoming Apple Store is already seen flashing a huge advertising banner of its grand opening. The banner reads “Apple Store, IFC mall. The new Center of Central”. This high profile retail center in Hong Kong will spread across two storeys of the four-storey IFC building with a waterfront shopping mall in the Central District that houses over 200 stores. As per reports, Apple has supposedly splurged a lavish amount of around $20 million on just the construction, let alone its promotion, inventory and staffing. It is worth mentioning here that this Apple Store is expected to employ around 300 staffs who will take care of an estimated 40,000 customers every day that will quadruple the surge of customers at the Apple store USA.
Though Apple Inc., humbly considers that it is just “scratching the surface” in the China region including Taiwan and Hong Kong, the sales has however already swollen to six-fold in the last quarter. It has been estimated that Apple has yielded approx. $8.8 billion revenue (which is 11% of total revenue generation of Apple Inc.) in the past three quarters.
“The sales momentum for the iPhone is still very strong, and we see the growth being maintained for the next few quarters” observed Sandy Shen, an analyst at Gartner Inc. in Shanghai. Hence, it is clear that the IFC Apple Store location will help Apple to bring down its dependence on authorized resellers for sales of Apple products, especially when iPhone 5, iPhone 4G and iPad 3 are expected to debut soon. You may go gaga over the stupendous glass cube construction of 5th Avenue Apple Store that never stops functioning (works for 24×7) in New York City, a city that never sleeps, but, now you need to rethink and wait till September 24, 2011 before the Apple Store, IFC inaugurates. So, see you there!
