Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) calls the six new stores it has opened to demonstrate its consumer products “Winter Wonderlab.” It is a shame the search company will only have six of them. During a holiday season in which retailers large and small will do whatever they can to attract consumers, the Wonderlab will be lost in the sea of foot traffic. Google has gone too small with the project, which will get it a day of publicity, but little more.
The Winter Wonderlab will have what is hardly even a modest selection of product: the Nexus 7 tablet, Chromecast (which allows people to send video from one device to another), the Chromebook PC and Google Play, the online equivalent of Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) App Store. Google Play is shopped by millions of people online, so it is a wonder that Google has elected to show off the online store within its physical ones.
The Wonderlab locations are in New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, New Jersey, Sacramento and Los Angeles. Some of the stores, like the ones in Westfield Garden State Plaza in New Jersey and Westfield Annapolis, Md., have little foot traffic, compared to other places in the same cities. Google must have chosen the places late in the year, when precious store locations have already been taken.
Another puzzling aspect of the Google decision is that Wonderlab is up against dozens of Apple Retail Stores in dozens of states. Even Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ: MSFT) has nearly 100 stores in the United States. And all of these are dwarfed by hundreds of Best Buy Co. Inc. (NYSE: BBY) locations and other major retailers that carry consumer electronics, including those from those tech companies that have opened their own.
Wonderlab might be an experiment hatched by Google as a means to see if physical stores are an alternative to selling its products online or through other retailers. If so, it is a sorry one. Come “Play. Create. Chill.” the Google promotion for the Wonderlab says. If you can find one.
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