There have been plenty of pop-ups, but tomorrow Google’s first store opens in NYC’s Chelsea neighborhood. The brick-and-mortar model finds the company joining peers like Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, and even Amazon, all of whom have a retail presence in Manhattan, including several just around the corner from Google’s new digs.
The new space opens tomorrow at 10 a.m. local time and fills 5,000 square feet of selling space in Google’s significant, pricey West Side real estate investment. A Post Office and Starbucks previously occupied the retail location, which vacated the premises once their leases expired under their new corporate landlord.
The store’s layout is designed to be experiential, highlighting the company’s growing hardware portfolio along with select third-party partners. Essentially it’s a way for the company to get Pixel phones, Home offerings, Stadia, WearOS, and the newest addition to the hardware portfolio, Fitbit devices, in front of tourists and locals.
“We used the pop-ups over the last several years to get a better sense of customer expectations for what we can uniquely deliver at Google,” VP Jason Rosenthal said during a press preview week. We’ve taken learnings from our 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 pop-ups and fed that learning into what we’re opening[…] in Chelsea.”
Due to pandemic restrictions, the preview was virtual. And while it’s open to the public this week, the company will maintain the standard safety precautions as the city deals with (knock on wood) the tail end of the pandemic.
And while COVID-19 almost certainly slowed the planned opening, Google promises that things will be in full force starting tomorrow. This follows several weeks of piloting, wherein the store’s 50 or so staffers were put through their paces while the company put the finishing touches on the experience. Before this, Google built a full-size store mockup in a hangar space in Mountain View to test out ideas.
In addition to product screens and dioramas lining the 17-foot windows, the company filled the store with “sandboxes” — effectively scenarios like a living room, not dissimilar to what you might find in a large furniture store — albeit better lit. There’s also a gaming area for playing Stadia and a soundproof spot for testing various Home/Nest products.
Like Apple’s Store, customers can bring in for repair broken devices like Pixels. The company says it’s growing the number of devices that can be repaired on-site, while specific issues, like a broken screen, should be able to be fixed same day.
It seems likely that the store is a pilot in and of itself, with further plans to open additional locations in the U.S. and, perhaps, international markets where the company sells hardware. For now, however, Google won’t discuss the subject beyond tomorrow’s opening in Chelsea.
