Apple’s own premium reseller, imagine, has now closed its doors 9-years after launching a store at Select CityWalk (south Delhi), where the American technology company opened its second store in the nation last week. Instead of a rival, imagine was the first casualty after Apple opened its own stores in India. The premium reseller wasn’t even on Apple’s list of 20 or so brands that forbade the mall from constructing new businesses close to its outlet.
The owner of the mall decided against extending Imagine’s lease because it believed that sales at the company-owned retail store would be greater and that there was no need for another business to carry the same line.
People with access to the information claim that Apple has a dozen or so authorized resellers in India that provide customers with extra discounts and cashbacks on product purchases. The operator of Select CityWalk informed the owner of the Imagine shop that it would not renew the lease after the business’s opening in 2014.
The majority of the merchants have nine-year leases with three-year rent increases. When a lease for premium brands expires, mall operators typically renew it. The picture store would have remained open even if Apple had chosen to locate its flagship location somewhere in Delhi.
After signing the contract with Apple in July 2022, Select Infrastructure Private Ltd. informed Imagine that it would not be able to extend the lease, despite the store’s success.
Devialet, Facebook, Amazon, Bose, Foxconn, Huawei, Alphabet/Google, Intel, Lenovo, Nest, Nokia, LG, Microsoft, Panasonic, Samsung, Xiaomi, Oppo, Sony, Vivo, and OnePlus are among the 20 firms listed by Apple in the deal that are prohibited from opening stores close to it.
