George Blankenship
Yeah, we are opening more stores this year, this fall. In fact, one of our next stores will be in the New York metropolitan area, and then we’ll come back with another two. And then we’ll go further north from there into the Massachusetts area and down into the DC area. We think that market holds lots and lots and lots of potential because we already have the number of reservations we have there without a lot of presence. When we have presence, my retail history tells me that there is lots and lots of untapped potential there that we are going to begin tapping starting in September.
Elon Musk
Actually I think a lot of people on the call are probably from the greater New York area, so maybe it would be worth just listing the stores that we’ve opened in the greater New York area, and the ones that will be opening in the next few months.
George Blankenship
Sure. For those of you in the New York area, you’re probably aware we have the store on 25th Street. It’s been there for a while. And then we opened up into Westchester, up in Westchester County. And it’s doing very, very well. Very, very nicely. And you know, we see where all the reservations are coming from through each store. And it’s actually increased the reservation flow in the West 25th Street store. So having two stores in the market has helped.
For those of you in North Jersey, we’ll be opening up in Garden State Plaza and Short Hills Mall. And then for you in Long Island, we’ll be looking to open up in Roosevelt Field. So going from one store on West 25th Street to having two in Northern Jersey, one in Westchester County, and one in Long Island, it’s a pretty good capture of the New York metropolitan area with those particular centers surrounding the city.
Elon Musk
And our store in Chelsea, we got that lease because it was the only lease we could afford back in the day, and it’s still basically a version 1.5 of store technology. If you want to see the latest in store technology - and I’m not using that word facetiously; there really is store technology - you want to go to the Westchester or the stores that are opening up in New Jersey or Long Island. That will show you the latest and greatest in the retail experience.
But it just gives you some sense. I count the store in Chelsea as like a half store. And we had a half store until a few months ago in the entire greater New York area. A half store.
George Blankenship
And like I said, what’s happened is when we opened up the Westchester, we got that additional awareness and a little bit of publicity and media. We now have two full stores. Because we took the half store and made it into a full store with reservations. And not from a technology standpoint, but from a productivity standpoint.
