Gadgetory

hey guys this is dmitri with Haru canucks i'm here at east york in toronto at a microsoft and best buy exclusive media preview event where they've teamed up and they're opening up a bunch of stores throughout Canada and the states and bringing us the user experience of actually getting to try the product before buying them something that Microsoft and well Windows tablets have been missing in this consumer scene right behind me is the sample store what looks very open looks kind of like the mac store as well but we'll also be talking to microsoft and bestbuy representative to see exactly what's up new things able to offer aside from this sort of hands-on experience and what exactly what are the strategies in in terms of lowering their customers so i'm martin van der Velden I'm the vice president of merchandising for best buy canada or how many stores are you planning sort of watching goal is to get 105 stores completed this year so that all Canadians across the country have an opportunity to come into a Windows Store before Christmas so there's a couple of elements that we've added with the Windows Store first thing is this innovation table that you can see so what that does is allows us to kind of highlight some of the new technologies and the new products that come to market right in a different way than we've been able to do in the past you know we find that eighty-five percent of our customers do shop online first and I think that's great and you know we're all about the customer however they want to interact with us but there are still people that they may see something online and they may have one or more questions that they need answer and so they have that ability to come into our store where we can help them through that last minute decision so they may be caught between two products and then we can kind of help them understand the difference between this one or that and you were telling me earlier that you'll have so representatives helping the customers to if they have any issues or again choosing the best between setting one or two yeah so we've also want the other elements you that we added is a Windows consultant so in this consultant this person will be trained at a very high level by both jointly through best buy canada and microsoft and they'll be able to answer a lot of questions about how the ecosystem works and how different devices interact and of course we also have our blue shirts in the case of best buy and in future shop it's our product experts that can also answer any questions and again because we have all the windows stuff together and we have this consultant there's going to be a lot of learning through that individual's rights rights it's uh we think that that that gives an incentive for the consumer to come to the store it's not really about us trying to differentiate against other retailers it's more about trying you know we are the largest retailer of computers in Canada so it's listening to our consumers and trying to change the experience because of the way they now shop right a lot of people you'll see them walking into our stores with their phones and they're checking prices and or they're looking up specs and so we need to evolve our store to be a better shopping experience for our customers and that's what we're trying to do what we will do with Windows wait hey guys here i'm here with Elliot so Elliot what he do for futures up some the communications manager for future shop which is a sister company to bestbuy canada right so Elliot why has windows stores have only rolled out in September you have over 30 stores now throughout Canada so why this opening of stores only now sure well it's definitely been a timed process and something that's been in development for several months with our teams both at bestbuy future shop and also our team at Microsoft and I think why it's taken to this point to launch is a we know that September and october leading up to the holidays is a hotbed for retail especially when i was going back to school back then also holiday shopping is a great time to show up we've got a lot of exciting devices now that are now in the market like the surface to that just launched this week at future shop in best buy stores which is super exciting that time technology and the fact that we know that our customers are navigating towards this type of ecosystem we call it and that's an easy way to navigate through one operating system and in this case it's windows 8 that just also launched this year so I think long and short of it is there's all this exciting technologies that's launching for fall 2013 we made perfect sense based on our customer behavior and they've been wanting this type of customer interaction to launch at this time so basically all the stars or in this case all the technology aligned as it was a perfect time to do it and we're really excited to launch our store here in Lisa Toronto oh yeah we want people that are watching this video to not just think it's Toronto's centrica that's we're standing today if you're in Winnipeg if you're in Vancouver if you're in Calgary Edmonton X the end if you're in Montreal you're going to see these stores and hopefully also be impressed with how easy it is to navigate so if you're going in there for a laptop and you have this in mind you might have your eyes open and realize you know what there's other different form factors to in ones touch screens and and so on and I know earlier we're discussing about how the smartphone has helped really influence or condition our customers to have that touch feature yeah we're keeping not only tech forward but also catering to our customer today which just loves that touch environments easy to walk through and you're absolutely right you see that analogy of customers walking down the halls trying to touch the screens because they're just so used to that environment right alright thanks Elliot hey guys i'm here with Greg barber the vice president of consumer channels for Microsoft Canada how will this Windows Store improve the the consumer experience for people who want to perhaps move on to the windows ecosystem or perhaps are who are looking to expand their windows devices the window stars very important to Microsoft and very important to Best Buy and future shop because the just the range of devices and the range of services that are coming to market we've got a heck of a story to tell and and this is our platform to go tell that story and best buy and future shop are the best at doing that so what I mean by that with Windows 8.1 the new windows just released its just released the new surface to just released the new chip sets that have all come to market the Haswell chips and the Bay Trail chips for both super light power usage for a mobile world and then all the new form factors in terms of tablets too and ones all in ones that are coming to market the innovation table I think is something really cool because like you said you get a first-hand experience on the coolest tech from with this windows ecosystem so what are we to expect with this innovation table what are we to expect to see on here coming up Christmas and coming up moving forward basically yeah so this Christmas you'll see some all in ones that are frankly just giant tablets so an all-in-one is a desktop replacement but rather than just sit on the desktop you can pick up that 18 23 27 inch screen and then take it to another room I get to know the room put it on the coffee table and play a game or put it on the dining room table and you know collaborate you know do some joint surfing with someone or work on a document you'll also see some great touch laptops coming in all screen sizes you'll see some great to in ones you know for example like this HP for you know it's got a full keyboard looks like a great laptop but then you push the button and off comes the screen and so is it a tablet is it a PC yes it's a two in one or you get for example like this acer over here which you know it can be a tablet it can be a PC and then you get pure tablets so 8 inch tablets like the dell venue 8 that'll be coming to market larger screen tablets like lenovo will have some 11.1 inch tablets and of course their surface with the surface to with its 10.6 inch high-definition Dolby surround sound backlit keyboard just tons of innovation coming in the ecosystem all of it will be here and actually also this Christmas will have the new Nokia phone on the table this new 41-megapixel insanely high resolution camera on the phone you can dress it very very got it so that the coolest stuff in the ecosystem will be on the innovation table and then very shoppable as you can go to the all in one section the laptop section the two in one section or the tablet section which is right behind the surface area so the best that's coming from surface but then of course the eight-inch the other intel based products low price high resolution bigger screen all the windows tablets are all easily shoppable you know with a guided tour as it relates to the well-trained best buy staff with specialists exactly and then lots to learn if you go online to the Windows Store too if you want to continue your journey or start your journey online before you come to the store to maybe help narrow down you're looking right well guys that wraps it up for this media exclusive event here in east toronto and well i gotta say that this this partnership with Microsoft and pass by and future shop is going to be beneficial for the consumer there's no question about that as you can interact with the products before you buy it certainly has the advantages of just shopping online and so again thanks guys for watching we'll see you in the next video