Apple Store coming to London’s world-famous Harrods department store

Mark Gurman | Jan 19 2012 - 12:50 pm PT

Apple has opened retail stores prime locations like Grand Central Station and Fifth Avenue in New York, Covent Garden in London, the Louvre in Paris, and its Beijing store with a 40-foot curved glass exterior. While those stores may be large, beautifully architected, and significant, Apple is preparing a new store that will be even more extraordinary for the decade-old retail chain…

Beyond its string of over 300 Apple Stores across the globe, Apple has been eyeing a new strategy to bring its products into even more places. More than just putting stores in people’s commutes, like the Grand Central Station location, and in the neighborhoods of customers, Apple is looking to sell even more products with an updated form of its strategy called store-in-store (SIS). The program has existed for sometime now in the United States with Best Buy’s participation, and it will be taken to the next level later this year with Apple store-in-store’s coming to 25 Target locations in the U.S.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyODf18aj8Q]Video showing the exterior size of Harrods

Target is a large retailer across America, but Apple is looking to bring the Apple Store in a store to a new region: The United Kingdom. Moreover, the technology giant not going to do it at a standard consumer retailer with many locations like Target, but it is going to do it in a world-famous and exclusive attraction—Harrods. This is according to sources within the Harrods Company. Harrods is a magnificent department store in the heart of London, and it’s giant. In fact, it covers over 5 acres of land and the store itself features over one million square feet of selling space. Across the million square feet are over 330 departments that cover clothing, technology accessories, and food.

Apple Store inside of a Best Buy (much smaller than Harrods store)

The Apple brand will fit in well within the Harrod’s surroundings, and the Harrods Apple Store, itself, will blend in nicely with the store’s noted architecture. The Apple Store will feature most of what makes an Apple Store an Apple Store, like wooden tables and signage, but it will lack one critical element: the Genius Bar. The reasoning is not clear, but the Harrods sources speculate that it may have something to do with Apple wanting to keep that marquee aspect of the retail operations exclusive to its standalone locations. The store will be small in physical size compared to Apple’s other notable stores, but it will be much larger than the typical Apple SIS at Best Buy, for example.

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