Google likely to Open Retail Store by the End of This Year

An extremely reliable source has confirmed to 9to5Google that Google is in the process of building stand-alone retail stores in the U.S. and hopes to have the first flagship Google Stores open for the holidays in major metropolitan areas.

The mission of the stores is to get new Google Nexus, Chrome, and especially upcoming products into the hands of prospective customers. Google feels right now that many potential customers need to get hands-on experience with its products before they are willing to purchase. Google competitors Apple and Microsoft both have retail outlets where customers can try before they buy. Google's retail move won't be an entirely new area, however. This move may have come across as a surprise a couple of years ago, but with the advent of the Nexus devices and the Chromebook, along with upcoming devices such as Project Glass, a retail chain of stores is just the thing that the company needs. Google supposedly feels it needs a retail presence so that customers need to get a hands-on experience with the product before they purchase it. It currently has mini-stores within stores for selling Chromebooks (as seen above) but the Google stores are said to be much bigger in scale. According to 9t05Google, these new stores will operate independently and make direct sales to customers from Google like the Nexus online store does currently. It might also make sense for Google to sell its apparel and other Google-branded merchandise in these stores as well, but that's speculation on my part. The decision to open stores came when drawing up plans to take the Google Glass to the public. The leadership thought consumers would need to try Google Glass first hand to make a purchase. Without being able to use them first hand, few non-techies would be interested in buying Google's glasses (which will retail from between $500 to $1,000). From there, the decision to sell other Google-branded products made sense. Along with Glass, Google will have an opportunity to demonstrate other upcoming and Google X projects like driverless cars and mini-drone delivery systems at its stores. We're all familiar with the recent troubles that Google has had with keeping the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 in stock, and all signs point to that issue being caused by Google simply underestimating either the demand for the products, or underestimating the willingness of customers to purchase hardware sight-unseen from the Play Store. The second reason is more understandable, because Google's history with selling the Nexus One and the Galaxy Nexus directly to consumers may have given the company low estimates in that regard. The first reason would be one that is much more troubling.

The first reason also seems relatively plausible, because beyond the troubles with keeping the Nexus 4 and Nexus 10 in stock, Google has also had quite a bit of trouble keeping the new Samsung Chromebook in stock; and, while we may love Chrome OS, the demand for Chromebooks is nowhere near comparable to the demand for the new Nexus devices.

Google Retail Store

There are small bits of anecdotal evidence that Google is looking into retail. It is hiring folks to develop Point of Sale systems, for instance. However, most of the ramping up of these stores will be done by an outside agency. Recently, Apple CEO Tim Cook told analysts that Apple Stores were more than just stores, they were the face of the company.

I don't think we would have been nearly as successful with iPad if it weren't for our stores. It gives Apple an incredible competitive advantage. Others have found out it's not so easy to replicate. We're going to continue to invest like crazy. The average store last year was over 50 million in revenue.

Google may now understand that if it wants to roll out a whole new product category like Google Glass, it is going to have to dive into Retail. As of now, these stores are only said to open within US but hopefully they will spread to other locations around the world next year.
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