Apple’s new Paris flagship
WHAT’S not to love about the new Apple store, which opened last weekend in the Carrousel du Louvre?
If you’re a habitué of the NY or London stores, you may wonder what all the hype is about. Then again, the store’s cloud grey embrace should also make you feel at home… along with the racks of yummy pods, and an army of T-shirted staff primed to escort you with a can-do smile through every stage of your Macxperience.
Well, almost. Because, when it comes to the crunch, the Paris store hasn’t got quite got a handle on the service end of things yet.
The store assistants’ T-shirts tell me I’m going to be knocked out (“Vous allez être emballé”). But, actually, I’m not. Partly because it turns out to be quite hard to detach one of them from their self-absorbed huddles, and get them t to do some assisting. And also because, when it comes to paying for my purchase, the on-the-spot credit swipe system has developed a malfunction, so it’s back to the time-honoured French model…. you know, the one where you wait in a long and wooly queue, looking on as other johnny-come-latelys get served before you.
Just teething problems, no doubt.
Now the countdown starts for the real Paris flagship store. Almost twice the size of Apple Carrousel du Louvre, it’s due to open 2010, close to the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps.
