Apple planning pop-up shops for its Apple Watch

The Apple Watch is getting its own pop-up stores

By David Nield March 1, 2015

apple planning pop up shops for its watch on wrist — Jeremy Kaplan/Digital Trends

Apple already has a strong presence on the high street — some of its retail stores have become as iconic as the wares contained within — but there are signs that the Cupertino company wants to expand this presence even further. A number of pop-up displays are reportedly being built in high-end jewellers in Paris and London.

The latest rumor comes courtesy of MacRumors, which says that the Apple Watch is going to go on sale near the entrance to the Wonder Room in the London branch of Selfridges. The “store-within-a-store concept” will be used to show off all varieties of the smartwatch and one-to-one consultations are likely to be available for those who want them.

This is on the back of a previous rumor that a high-end Parisian department store would be featuring a pop-up Apple Watch store of its own. The store in question is Galeries Lafayette on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris, and there are suggestions that if these temporary displays are a success then Apple would consider setting up high street stores to sell the Apple Watch and nothing else.

Of course the device is going to be on sale in standard Apple Stores too, but company executives have often talked about approaching the new device from the watch angle rather than the gadget angle — so a retail approach that follows the luxury watch model would make a lot of sense and provide some distance between this and Apple’s other gadgets.

Apple has made no official comment, but with continuing rumors and snatched photos of the pop-up displays under construction, it seems likely that you’ll be able to buy the Apple Watch from several places on the high street. We should know more after Apple’s March 9 event.

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