Dyson to open Apple-style store design on Oxford Street

Trailblazing domestic appliance innovators Dyson are planning to open an Apple-style store on London’s Oxford Street sometime before Christmas. The new store design will be the second stand-alone offering from Dyson who opened their first store in Tokyo earlier this year.

Located at a prime retail spot opposite Selfridges, at 439-451 Oxford Street – where the rent is though to be around 1 million pounds per year – the store is a bold move for the vacuum cleaner makers who have also branched out into other technological innovations over the past few years.

Sources told Retail Week that the contracts were due to be exchanged on the development in the next week or so and that Dyson hopes to refit and open the store sometime in late November, just in time for the legendary Christmas shopping festivities on the world famous street.

The range of products on display in the new store will range from Dyson’s trademark vacuum cleaners to other domestic ranges including heaters and fans. The store design is reportedly going to be based on that of an Apple Store with the gadgets on hand for people to try out and plenty of helpful staff available to demonstrate the products or offer technical advice to customers.

At present, Dyson trades in more than 70 countries and is looking to open at least six of these dedicated stores worldwide, with London identified as a key market for their innovative products.

Dyson’s first store of this kind which uses an Apple-style store design was opened in Tokyo – the tech capital of the world – last April and as you can see from these photos of the store, the product placement and store layout is very futuristic and certainly borrows more than a little from the Apple design approach (although, as we reported the other week, Apple are now rethinking their trademark store design to keep things fresh as other are now starting to copy them).

A spokesperson for Dyson confirmed to Retail Week that they are scouting further store locations but did not confirm or deny the Oxford Street news – presumably as the contracts had not been exchanged at this point:

“We like people to get hands-on with our technology. Cleaning up, down, in-between with our cordless vacuums or feeling the hydrated air from our hygienic humidifiers. It’s all about experience.

“We are looking at environments, like our Tokyo space, that allow us to explain our technology and hopefully enthuse people about science and engineering too.”

As always, we’ll be watching this (retail) space to see what develops and if it does we’ll report back with a review of the new store layout. As one of Britain’s great innovators, we are expecting good things from Dyson…