Daily US Times: Microsoft announced plans to permanently close all of its physical store locations in the United States and around the world. The decision excludes four locations that will be “reimagined” as experience centers that no longer sell products.
Those locations are New York City (Fifth Ave), Sydney (Westfield Sydney), London (Oxford Circus) and the Redmond campus location.
The London store was just opened a year ago. This is very big step from a giant tech company in this pandemic times. As all Microsoft stores will be closed gradually, the company will concentrate on digital retail moving forward. Microsoft says Microsoft.com and the Xbox and Windows storefronts reach “up to 1.2 billion monthly customers in 190 markets.”
But the company said no layoffs will take place from Friday’s announcement.
In a LinkedIn post, Microsoft Store VP David Porter said: “Our commitment to growing and developing careers from this diverse talent pool is stronger than ever.”
This plan was originally in place for next year, a source with knowledge of Microsoft’s retail operations told The Verge, but was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Microsoft’s Xbox Series X is launching this holiday, so it makes sense that the company had at least initially planned for the stores to make it that far.
The big decision partially explains why Microsoft had not reopen a single store after they were all closed in light of the coronavirus pandemic. Microsoft told last week that its “approach for re-opening Microsoft Store locations is measured and cautious, guided by monitoring global data, listening to public health and safety experts, and tracking local government restrictions.”
Continued closure of Microsoft stores hasn’t stood out as unusual because many of them are in shopping centers and malls.
Many states in the US are taking a cautious approach to restore retail operations — to avoid a resurgence of the novel coronaviruS, while most shopping centers remain closed. There have already been spikes of COVID-19 cases in regions with more relaxed guidelines, which has led Apple to re-close some stores where it had only recently welcomed customers back in.
Microsoft published a blog post in April outlining how many retail store associates had shifted to remote work after their everyday jobs were sidelined. The company has continued to provide regular pay for team members through the pandemic.
“Our retail team members will continue to serve customers working from Microsoft corporate facilities or remotely and we will continue to develop our diverse team in support of the overall company mission and objectives,” the company said in today’s update.
You may read: US ‘not even close’ to doing enough to fight pandemic, Bill Gates says
