Chicago, say "Hello, Moto" to Motorola's new retail store along 108 N. State St.
In the city center of its hometown, the Lenovo-owned company is opening its first ever brick-and-mortar store on Nov. 7, just in time for the holiday shopping season.
The "Moto Shop" is Motorola's "experiential boutique" where it hopes customers can get up close and personal with the company's latest line of smartphones and smartwatches. On the official Motorola blog, the company explains that "smartphones and wearables are the most personal accessories we own, and we want to make the shopping experience for Moto devices equally personal."
Instead of glazing our eyes over virtual products online and reading through a long list of technical specs, Motorola wants the Moto Shop to be the place for us to really get hands-on with its latest gadgets and truly test them out with our own hands (and it's totally okay if they slip through our fingers, too).
To Motorola's credit, their first shot at a retail store looks good, taking design cues from Microsoft's and Apple's stores and adding more wood accents here and there. In fact, the whole store is designed as some sort of workshop where customers can test out the different features of the company's products at specific sections of the store.
Moto Maker, for example, is Motorola's online design studio that allows customers to customize their smartphones to their liking. At the Moto Shop, the company has brought Moto Maker to the real world where their selection of genuine leathers and woods are available in multiple colors so visitors can actually build their own Moto X Pure Edition handsets on the spot.
After designing their own Moto X Pure Edition or even DROID Turbo 2, customers can walk over to the Moto 360 area where they can continue personalizing their smartwatch. Motorola says nearly all the Moto Maker customization options are already on display so shoppers can really get a good look and feel at a Moto 360 on their actual wrist.
Other sections of the Moto Shop include a mini set where a Moto X Pure Edition is set up on a tripod so potential buyers can take shots with the device's 21-megapixel camera. The "Moto Shoot" set even comes complete with a set of multi-colored props, too.
Finally, the Moto Shop may be the only place where it's okay to drop a phone at the store's Drop Zone. If shoppers want to see if the DROID Turbo 2 screen really is shatterproof, they'll have a choice of wood, concrete, ceramic and tile surfaces on which to drop the device.
