A new Apple Store has just opened in Beijing which is the biggest in Asia. The store is guaranteed to be successful due to rich and upwardly mobile, highly image-conscious Chinese consumers and its location at the very popular Wangfujing pedestrian street and shopping area for foreign tourists and upscale Chinese.
So far, Apple Stores in China seem to be limited to Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong so we don't have one here in Xiamen yet. I imagine that will change before too long, but for now we'll just have to be satisfied with a local substitute, mr. frog.
At first, I thought this mr. frog with the nice Apple logo entrance might be an Apple knockoff store. Although I have no iProducts, I went inside to take a look out of sheer curiosity and didn't find any iPhones, iPads or even iFrogs (or live frogs which can instead be found in many grocery stores). Instead, the store sells mainly cellphone and iPad accessories such as cases. Apparently, this store (and other Chinese businesses) believe that the famous Apple image is so popular among Chinese consumers that you can sell just about anything by putting a once-bitten apple on it.
To celebrate the opening of the Wangfujing store, there was the currently obligatory performance of the Korean song Gangnam style with its silly horse dance (just can't escape this song wherever you go nowadays). The store takes up 2300 square meters (24,750 square feet for any Americans that can't visualize meters) and features a 3-floor, all-glass staircase.
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| A frontal view of Beijing's newest and biggest iStore |
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