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Syndey Apple Store Opens June 19th. Resellers fear inevitable demise.

It comes as no surprise that Apple goes all-out when it comes to their retail stores. The brand new store Apple is building in Sydney, Australia is costing the company a whopping $15 million. While being Apple’s first store in the southern hemisphere, it will be comparable in size, luxury, lavishness and general “WOW”, to Apple’s nicest stores in New York, Boston and Japan.

Ron Johnson, Apple’s retail guru, spoke exclusively with The Sydney Morning Herald. Here are a few key quotes from the interview.

“We’re not coming to open a single store in Sydney,” Johnson said. “We will open more stores but we are not prepared at this time to talk about additional cities, additional stores.”

“It’s going to be a breathtaking store,” says Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice-president in charge of retail. “We’ve been working on the store for a long time and everyone … is very excited for that [opening] day to come.”

“…it is one of the biggest stores we’ve ever built and what I would say for now is that it’s a very significant store,” Johnson says.

The new Apple store will occupy three-floors (similar to the newly opened Boston Store) of a re-furbished building that stands directly on the corner of King and George Streets in the Sydney CDB (Central Business District).

“We really value design at Apple and we spend – on our stores just like our product – considerable amounts of time trying to create the right design for the right location,” Johnson continues to explain.

The Sydney Morning Herald reports that although Apple seems positive about furthering its relationship with resellers. However, Apple is simply not concerned with them going out of business either.

“Our experience has been throughout the world that our resellers adapt, we adapt,” Johnson says. “We build good partnerships and the winner is the customer because the customer gets more choice.”

Although Apple living alongside resellers may seem possible in a land where fairness rules, however this is the real world. Inevitably resellers who have supported themselves selling Apple products, will now lose large amounts of business due to Apple’s strong and growing retail presence down under. Specifically in Sydney, Apple reseller Next Byte will be among the first to feel the impact. The chain has two of its 23 outlets within less then a one-kilometer (1 kilometer = 0.62 mile) radius of the new Sydney store.

“We are actually looking forward to it,” says David McMahon, the joint chief executive of the Vita Group, the listed company that owns Next Byte.

While it would be nice to see both stores living in harmony, even through the textual verbiage of the interview, a tone of fear is evident. Apple’s 3G iPhone is expected to be on sale “at least” by June 19th, so as to be available when the new retail store opens.

The store will officially open for business on Thursday, June 19th at 5pm.

via SMHerald