Apple opens store at the Louvre
In a move sure to confound retail store openings by rival Microsoft, Apple has announced that they have opened a store in Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, just beneath the famous Louvre art gallery.
Although it is not quite the same thing as opening a store in the Louvre, it is still as close as a commercial venture can get. Carousel is a very upscale shopping center built underneath the Louvre museum in Paris. The Louvre store is the first to be opened by Apple in France, though it has a store in Montpelier that was ready to open sooner but was held waiting for a few weeks so that the retail store at the Louvre could open first, according to a CNET story.
Although it may seem like quite an honor to be allowed to open a retail store so near such a famous museum, it should be remembered that McDonald’s will be opening an outlet in the same shopping area. It seems that France is getting the best and worst of American culture in a treasured spot just below their iconic and priceless national works of art. One wonders what the reaction of the more conservative wing in France is to this invasion by American fast food and high technology. Although it must be noted that there are already more than 800 McDonald’s restaurants in France, and that the number of Apple stores has just grown infinitely from zero to two.
Although the press is having fun with this opening, wondering (as an example) if they are also planning to open a store in a Great Pyramid of Egypt or at Machu Picchu, this could be the start of an interesting ad campaign. Apple did, after all, just adopt a subway station in Chicago and have now opened a store under the Louvre. Stores like these would seem to be almost a natural for a series of ads relating Apple’s technology to the traditions of Chicago, Paris, and elsewhere. Apple is not a company likely to let perfectly good PR go to waste, so perhaps we can look forward to more openings like these, maybe each coming with a history lesson.
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