Roger Fingas
Samsung is preparing to launch a new showroom space in London a year from now in a bid to raise its prestige as a brand, a report said on Friday.
The Korean company is finalizing a lease for 20,000 square feet on the top floor of the Coal Drops Yard mall, still under construction, according to two Bloomberg sources. The location is a former Victorian coal store, and Samsung is expected to adopt a design similar to the space it has in New York City's Meatpacking district.
That U.S. site isn't a store, but instead described as "a new kind of place filled with ideas, experiences and Samsung's cutting edge devices." Companies like Google have adopted a similar promotional strategy, content in letting people buy devices online — or elsewhere — if they like what they see.
Samsung is likely interested in capturing the same attention as Apple's flagship store on Regent Street, which measures about the same size. Coal Drops Yard won't open until Oct. 2018, however.
Another Apple rival, Microsoft, recently confirmed that it's intending to open a flagship store in London's Oxford Circus, very close to Regent Street. While it has all but abandoned phones, it has been pushing harder into laptops and tablets with its Surface line, most recently announcing the Surface Book 2 — aimed directly at the MacBook Pro.
Samsung's London footprint will presumably focus on Galaxy S and Note phones —
which compete with Apple's iPhone — putting products like tablets, laptops, smartwatches, and fitness trackers in the periphery.
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16 Comments
Hope they have good fire suppression. :) By coincidence, I was at that very spot about 5 weeks ago. it's basically alongside a canal and next to another coal warehouse turned into a Waitrose grocery store. The Waitrose is very nice and I don't doubt the "mall" will be very nice. (It's not a mall in the American sense, more like the size of an office building with multiple shops inside.) However, the area around King's Cross is sort of down-market and dirty even for London.
I hope their doors handles don't drop off like they did on our almost new Samsung refrigerator and microwave! Of course ours were not covered by retailer's extended warranty as apparently handles dropping off due to cheap plastic connectors, is 'fair ware and tear!"