Report--Apple Store at Rockingham Park in Salem, NH

"The Apple Store at the Rockingham Park Mall layout is identical to the one at the Northshore Mall, Peabody, MA. One external difference is that there is a back door leading to a service/delivery back side of the mall so big box items can be loaded into a vehicle - or units for service can be offloaded - at the same unmarked door instead of being schlepped through the mall by hand cart.

"You can't follow your items in or out of the back door, however. It is strictly a package loading/unloading door. The customer entrance is only through the mall. Therein lies a design flaw in this two story edifice. As far as I could tell, there is no ground floor mall entrance/exit on the back side in the middle of the mall at least. The closest ground floor entrance is Macy's a few doors down. So, if you make a purchase at the Apple Store and had the misfortune to park on the back side of the mall to facilitate picking the box up, you have to climb a significant set of stairs, wend your way through the food court, and then down another significant set of stairs to get to the ground floor again where you can retrieve your car and pick up your purchase. I suspect most folks park on the front side of the mall where there is a double decker garage and then drive to the back side for pickup.

"This is not the snazziest mall I have seen. The "main street" is none too wide. That being said, it was jumping today. Much vehicular traffic was coming from the south, i.e., from Massachusetts, possibly to take advantage of sales tax-free New Hampshire prices. In the hour and a half I was in the Apple Store I saw several big box items - computers, displays, printers and portables - being hand-trucked to the back door. I saw very few customers in and out in a hurry. Most seemed to be serious, either in shopping or getting answers to questions. This is contrary to the typical mall retail store where on the order of 70% of customers never buy anything; they're "just looking."

"It appears to me that Apple uses just-in-time management for floor staff. I never saw a customer waiting to be helped. Yet, I never saw an Apple rep standing around. When I first got there, there were only a couple of Apple reps helping - you got it - a couple of customers. When I came back a few minutes later, there were twice as many reps helping --. twice as many customers. I saw male and female floor reps talking to -- male and female customers respectively. Not exclusively, of course; I saw her help male customers, too. (I have read that female sales persons do very well in automobile dealerships both because females make more than 50% of the purchase decisions and because sales ladies may seem less intimidating to men as well as women. Perhaps it applies to computer customers, too.) Apple has a black male rep there also. The Genius Bar has just enough (!) tech reps to allow one to remain at the bar answering customer questions while another was working on a walk-in service problem in a back room.

"I saw a rep on the floor who had been very helpful when I visited the Peabody store. He has now been reassigned permanently to the Salem store. It is five miles closer to the Maine border, and he lives in a town just over the line in Maine.

"The more I see of these Apple stores, the better I like them. And, the walk-by visibility in a mall setting can't help but "rub off." I saw some kids excitedly tell their parents about the store as they were passing by."