The Bentonville Mafia has taken over Microsoft, and now that these former Wal-Mart execs are in charge, they want to open retail stores — which is not a bad idea, Cringely says:
So it seems inevitable to me that as Microsoft is operated more and more by executives from a giant retailer, that Microsoft will try doing some giant retailing of its own. And sure enough they are doing just that through this new plan to open Microsoft stores — a plan that could equally be laid at the feet of Apple as yet another Microsoft tactic copied from Cupertino.Only Microsoft stores are different from Apple, stories, we’re told, and that’s true: Apple needed distribution while Microsoft has distribution, in spades. In fact Microsoft has so much distribution that this chain of stores could be viewed very negatively by Microsoft resellers but probably won’t be because I doubt that Microsoft will be actually trying to sell much stuff, and what they do sell will be at full retail unlike everyone else. It’s like buying wine at the winery: you never get a deal, but the samples are free.
So you can try out that cool game computer at Microsoft but actually buy it at Best Buy, just as you would have before.
Why even do it, then? Why have these stores?
Propaganda.
Phil Schiller of Apple made the point back in January when he explained that Apple stores had 400,000 visitors per day or the equivalent of 20 Macworld shows every day. Microsoft wants the same thing. They want to bypass the press machine that they feel has tainted users against Windows Vista, making sure the same thing doesn’t happen to Windows 7.
If Microsoft can achieve that one goal — just that one — then the Microsoft stores will have been worth doing even if they never have a dollar of retail sales.