Dell to Open Two Mall Stores as Test

Dell, the world’s leading PC seller by market share, decided to veer away from the traditional direct-sales model that has made it so successful and open up experimental retail stores in two shopping malls—one in Texas and the other in New York, The New York Times reports.

The stores will not be average mall shops; rather, Dell will blend its existing sales model with that of regular mall retailers, allowing shoppers to browse and handle PCs, hardware and other electronics, as well as order items online from the store location, according to the Times. The ordered products will then be shipped to the customers’ residences, as if they’d ordered the items from home, the Times reports. Customers will not walk away with PCs they buy at the kiosks.

Venancio Figueroa told the Times, “The tenets of the [sales] model remain the same.” 

The stores are not the first attempt Dell has made to increase its presence in shopping malls. In fact, it currently operates roughly 160 small mall carts that feature about 12 products each, which customers can order via computers attached to the kiosks, the Times reports. The stores will, in effect, be expanded versions of the existing carts, according to the Times.

The move suggests Dell is attempting to curb its loss of market share over the past couple of months to companies like HP and IBM, by employing new avenues of sales. Dell has also been cutting back its PC pricing in recent days, the Times reports.

The new stores will be located in NorthPark Center in Dallas, Texas, and West Nyack, N.Y.’s Palisades Center, according to the Times.

For related news coverage, read Dell Plans AMD Servers as Profit Drops.

Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage.