New Zune Retail Display

[David Tucker]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090308/renders-of-flashier-new-zune-retail-displays/' target='_blank'>http://www.istartedsomething.com/20...etail-displays/</a><br /><br /></div><p><em>"The next time you&rsquo;re at an electronics store (if they&rsquo;re still around), you might have to put some shades on if you&rsquo;re to walk past the Zune display cabinet. <a href="http://www.pmsi.net/">Planned Marketing Solutions International (PMSI)</a>, an established creative agency out of Oregon, has been working on a redesign for the <a href="http://www.zunescene.com/zune-2-retail-display/">largely brown Zune retail displays</a> that are in many US electronic stores today. They&rsquo;ve recently put up some renders of this on their <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmsi/">Flickr stream</a>." - <a href="http://www.istartedsomething.com/20090308/renders-of-flashier-new-zune-retail-displays/" target="_blank">istartedsomething</a></em></p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/zt/auto/1236739483.usr307.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Have you gotten a little tired of the retail displays for the Zune that have been around since the player hit the market? Microsoft must be or someone at PMSI felt they should be since they recently posted some renders of some potential new in-store displays. I can&rsquo;t imagine most stores would dedicate such a large footprint to many products, let alone a Zune display. That said, these renders look very nice and I think having a display that takes at least some of these elements would certainly help the Zune&rsquo;s retail presence a bit.</p><p><img src="http://images.thoughtsmedia.com/resizer/thumbs/size/600/zt/auto/1236739495.usr307.jpg" style="border: 1px solid #d2d2bb;" /></p><p>Who knows, there&rsquo;s been talk of a <a href="http://www.applethoughts.com/news/show/92139/inside-microsoft-s-retail-experience.html" target="_blank">Microsoft store too</a>. They could easily have a display like this in one of their own stores! I like the one that&rsquo;s all orange and square corners the best. It really makes a bigger statement to me than the other one does. But I think they&rsquo;re both very nice.</p>

[inteller]

end cap? hahahahahaha yeah right. Walk into any major store and who gets the end cap? iPod....hands down. Case in point, the wal-mart here has a decent Zune display, but the end cap is allocated to iPod.

Microsoft needs to shell out some dough and just buy the end cap space away from apple. Microsoft failed big time by not keeping the Gamestop deal...they had that market cornered! I can't see this type of display in Best Buy since they have a very agnostic approach to music players other than iPod.

[Jason Dunn]

Microsoft failed big time by not keeping the Gamestop deal...they had that market cornered!

I think there's a reason why that fell though and Microsoft didn't care to keep it - Gamestop didn't sell music players before that, so guess what, no one buys music players from Gamestop! People made WAY too big a deal out of that...

[Macguy59]

In my city we're down to Best Buy, Walmart and Target for electronics. I would be shocked to see a display that large at any of them for a slow mover like the Zune. Perhaps there are incentives attached to them ?

[Jason Dunn]

In my city we're down to Best Buy, Walmart and Target for electronics. I would be shocked to see a display that large at any of them for a slow mover like the Zune.

There's no display that big for any single company/product, including the iPod, anywhere in a major electronics store. I suspect this is a concept for the Microsoft store...

[doogald]

There's no display that big for any single company/product, including the iPod, anywhere in a major electronics store. I suspect this is a concept for the Microsoft store...

Actually, our local Target has something like this for iPods. Maybe three-quarters that size, but it's a small Target. Most of it is third-party stuff designed for iPods. And our Best Buy has a pretty big Apple computer section, at least as big as this. There is a big block monolith with software titles at each end, with a huge, very Apple Store looking table in front with iMacs and MacBooks running.

Target had a pretty good merchandising set when the Zune first came out, too.

That said, I expect you're right about this being pretty specialized for trade shows and Microsoft Stores and such.

[Macguy59]

I suspect this is a concept for the Microsoft store...

Makes sense

[Jason Dunn]

Actually, our local Target has something like this for iPods. Maybe three-quarters that size, but it's a small Target.

Hmm. Guess I spoke too soon - I've been in Best Buys and Targets in the US (mostly in the Seattle area), but haven't seen anything remotely like this. My local Best Buy has what I'd call a "double-wide" end-cap for iPods, but just iPods. You want headphones, you go to another aisle. You want iPod cases, you go to another aisle, etc. Circuit City (RIP) is the only place where I saw the devices and the accessories in the same place, but it was just in the same aisle, not a "mega" display like this one.