You may not have known it, but Google’s retail aspirations have been around since the company’s inception. In fact, the very first Google product, back in 1998, was a custom Web browser with its homepage at the top, which the company called “Gopher.” Google’s second product, a book search engine called Backrub, was launched in 1998.
Why is Google moving into the retail space? Google is following in the footsteps of other tech giants like Amazon, Apple, and Facebook, who are increasingly opening their own physical stores to showcase the products they sell. It’s a smart business move that could help Google-and its parent company, Alphabet- expand their reach, especially to the lucrative physical retail space.
The New York Retail Store
If you’ve been following Google’s retail plans over the past few years, then the company’s first-ever permanent retail store is probably a familiar name to you. That’s because this month, Google is opening its first retail space (a so-called “flagship store”) in New York City.
Google has announced that it will open its first retail store ever. This will be the initial physical store for the company, and it will be available to the public starting in the summer. This store will be located in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, and it will occupy a space around 30,000 square feet (0.28 ha). Google will be selling a “limited” number of products, including clothing, home goods, toys, and furniture. They might even incorporate insightful, high-quality magazines or catalogs provided by companies like Printivity, to allow customers to browse through their collections and gain more knowledge on Google’s retail activities. Google says that it’s “thrilled” to be opening this first retail store, and it hopes that it will be a success.
Every few years, Google sets aside a prime real estate location to open a very special, limited-time retail store. Their first-ever retail store, a beautiful brick-and-mortar permanent location, will open this summer. Grab a pint of ice cream or a tote from our shopping cart, then kick back and enjoy the company of the cherry blossoms.
This summer, shoppers can visit a store that looks as if it could show up anywhere. The company has been tight-lipped about where the store will be and what it will offer, but we can guess it will be somewhere near a metro area that has a large number of Google employees.
The California Retail Store
It’s been almost eight years since Google first entered the retail space with its first physical retail store, the Google Store in San Francisco. Back then, the company was still getting its feet wet, offering hard-to-find or hard-to-find-in-big-boxes items such as the Nexus One smartphone, the Chrome OS laptop, and the Google TV system.
The internet giant has partnered with a California developer to build a massive retail store in the town of Busselton in Western Australia. The store is set to open later this year and will include a Google Play Store and café. The retail space is set to be 300,000-square-feet, with the company also planning for a small Google Campus in the town. The plans for the building were unveiled in a short video posted to Google’s official YouTube channel.
The search giant is building its first permanent retail store on the West Coast, and its location will be announced in the next few weeks. The development will open in Mountain View, California, near its headquarters and Google’s new Google Park, intended to serve as a public gathering place and event space near Google’s corporate campus. The store will hold a combined gross floor area of approximately 30,000 square feet (0.28 ha), with plans for an additional 20,000 square feet (0.19 ha) of seating on the second floor.
Google is opening a retail store this summer. The store will function as a showcase for Google products, but it is unclear whether the space will include any kind of physical storefront. The Google Store is expected to take up about one floor of the retail space and feature products such as Google Home, Pixel phones, and other hardware. The company might also need to install store fixture equipment that can help in showcasing products.
The store will sell clothing, accessories, and products from the Google family of brands, including hardware, furniture, electronics, and home goods. Managing the stocks of all these products would also require large warehouse spaces and equipment like industrial ladders, pallet jacks, hand trucks, etc. to ensure it functions smoothly. In addition, they would also require –specific software to keep track of the influx and outflow of different products; some efficient professionals to manage the warehouses, as well as retail stores; and a few marketing campaigns to make people aware of the offline stores.
That is not all: Google has announced plans for a pop-up store at Pier 35 in San Francisco, where it will sell a limited number of products, but it has not yet determined what they will be. These retail stores are bound to have a lot of product management and branding needs. Packaging, for instance, might become one of the major marketing tools since google has never before had a retail store. They might have approached packaging companies like Epic Packaging (hop over to this website) to meet their custom packaging requirements.
The first thing you’ll notice about the new store is that it’s about the size of a single parking space. And that’s not because it’s small; it’s because all the products are housed in a single shelf, where shoppers can find them all in one place. What you won’t notice, though, is that most people don’t need to go into the store to shop for the products in Google’s first permanent retail location. Instead, the company simply built a giant map on its website, which, after you’ve zoomed in to the store’s location, will show you every single product you can buy.
