Photo: Vít Hassan for PrahaIN.cz/Apple brand store in the center of Prague
The store in the Koruna Palace on Wenceslas Square has the potential to become a magnet for locals and tourists.
The American brand is well known and is also widely available in the capital. The long queues that form during the Friday “premiere” are mainly due to discounts.
In the newly opened store, for example, there is a 25 percent discount on MacBooks and fifteen percent on iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, AirPods and other branded accessories.
Several future customers told us exactly this reason.
The PrahaIN.cz editorial team spoke with them shortly before 7:00 p.m.
“I’m a student and the discount is obvious, and I’m also an Apple lover,” said Petr Mašek from Modřany. The woman standing next to him, with whom they were connected just by waiting, basically copied him. “I’m going to get a new watch, I’ll be here for half an hour,” she said literally a few steps in front of the entrance.
In front of the store at 6:40 p.m. Photo: PrahaIN.cz
Discounts drag on
Another of those waiting said that he had been here for around twenty minutes, but it was much worse in the afternoon. “The MacBook discount is really big, it’s an expensive machine, that’s why I’m here,” he told our reporter.
“We expect that (the store) will attract both Apple device users from Prague and tourists. We saw this in our previous store in Můstek, where roughly a third of the customers were foreign visitors. They are interested in what an Apple store looks like in the very center of a world metropolis, they usually buy branded accessories or products that are slightly cheaper here than in their home country,” explained Petr Syrůček, the owner of the aforementioned store.
As he further added in the official report, this is the first store of this type in the Czech Republic, which is not in a shopping center.
In front of the shop at 19:10. Photo: PrahaIN.cz
“We have been waiting a long time for an exclusive location in the Crown Palace to become available. It’s a location that such a high-class store deserves,” he concluded.
Those waiting on Friday were also helped by the fact that, despite the stronger wind, it was around ten degrees in the metropolis all day.
We also wanted to take some photos inside the very beautiful shop, but that was not possible during the operation. “There could be potential problems with capturing customers’ faces, but we will allow you to take photos after closing in about an hour,” a PR manager who would be on site told the editors.