No Apple Watches in store until June as April 24th date removed from website
No Apple Watches in store until June, Ahrendts tells
staff as April 24th date removed from website
Written by: Ben Lovejoy 5 hours, 56 minutes ago
Angela Ahrendts has told Apple Store staff that the Apple
Watch is unlikely to be available for in-store purchases before June – but they
should expect the usual ‘blockbuster launches’ in retail stores for future
products.
In a memo to retail store staff, Apple’s retail head
thanked staff for making the try-ons “unforgettable,” told them customer
feedback had been “overwhelmingly positive” and that the online-only ordering
period was likely to continue throughout May.
“ Many of you have been getting questions asking if we
will have the watch available in stores on April 24 for walk-in purchases. As
we announced last week, due to high global interest combined with our initial
supply, we are only taking orders online right now. I’ll have more updates as we
get closer to in-store availability, but we expect this to continue through the
month of May.
Ahrendts said that the decision to do things this way had
not been an easy one …
She said that the approach of in-store previews with
online orders had been taken because the watch was not just a new product but
an entirely new category for the company.
“ There’s never been anything quite like it. To deliver
the kind of service our customers have come to expect—and that we expect from
ourselves—we designed a completely new approach. That’s why, for the first
time, we are previewing a new product in our stores before it has started
shipping.
The number of watch and band permutations also meant this
approach would “get customers the model they want earlier and faster.”
But if you were worried that Apple might take the same
approach with future iPhone launches, Ahrendts had some words of reassurance.
“ Are we going to launch every product this way from now
on? No. We all love those blockbuster Apple product launch days—and there will
be many more to come.
Help will also be available in-store when customers
receive their watches, including personal setup to sync Apple Watches to
iPhones. The full text of the memo, which was acquired by iGen, can be seen below.
In a tacit acknowledgement that few of those who have
ordered an Apple Watch will receive them by the official launch date of April
24th, Apple quietly removed the date from its website last night. KGI estimated
that pre-orders will top 2.3 million by next month, after it was earlier
estimated that first-day orders in the USA alone were close to a million.
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