Before everything else, let us clarify some things first.
Two years before, Xiaomi has pulled out of the Philippine market due to reportedly weak sales. However, what we have seen today and in the past years in the gadget community seems to be the opposite. Sales of Xiaomi smartphones and other products have emerged, and while the advantage of grabbing them online appeals to some Xiaomi fans, nothing still beats an official, authorized physical store that offers official warranties backed by Xiaomi themselves.
Now, in a supposed partnership with Grimalkin Corporation, Xiaomi brings back their product offerings (with plans to open up a store as well in SM Megamall soon), although they are still tight-lipped on to what extent their partnership with Xiaomi will be like dealing with warranties and after sales support, which is the problem the Xiaomi fans are facing right now, hoping to be not in the future.
So what makes this news interesting? Like what we’ve said earlier, Xiaomi backs out, and is now returning after two years, in hopes of selling their array of products from smartphones & computers, to smart watches, accessories and gadgets such as robot vacuum cleaners and rice cookers, to smart cameras and televisions, bikes, scooters and even shoes?
Located at 4th floor of Trinoma Mall near its array of Cinemas, people have queued up even before the opening of the mall, and the line is totally insane, since the official authorized store’s Facebook page has opened up a pre-registration form and gives everyone there a chance to win a Mi A1, Xiaomi’s Android One smartphone, on which they are offering cheaper than its online seller competitors – only PhP10,990. They also offered free t-shirts and other freebies to the firsts in line.
Here are some of the products that are sold in the store:
Xiaomi is using the same business model that Apple has when it comes to selling their devices here in the Philippines.
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Grimalkin Corporation and Xiaomi seems to use the same style Apple has with PowerMac stores. The PowerMac stores are built with the look and feel or ambience of Apple’s official stores, at least according to what we’ve know. However, we don’t know yet about how they handle device repairs and warranties, if it’s like PowerMac who has an array of Apple-certified technicians or forwarding the products to Xiaomi themselves for repair.
They promised also to give further updates about the stores on a press release later. We’ll be looking out for that as well!
