Apple Stores are dragging down growth at this chain of upscale shopping malls

apple store

Jeff Zelevansky/Reuters

Apple’s retail stores are among the most recognizable destinations in shopping malls thanks to their sleek, glass-filled designs. 

But Apple’s status as the shining star of the shopping mall may be fading.

Apple Stores are actually slowing growth in some American shopping malls, according to General Growth Properties CEO Sandeep Mathrani on an earnings call today.

It’s not great timing for Apple, which just posted a quarter of slowing sales growth that had many analysts disappointed. 

General Growth Properties (GGP) manages a chain of 97 upscale malls, all across the country.

You know, the kind that have Banana Republic instead of Old Navy and rarely have anything as common as a McDonalds. Those malls include 46 out of the 268 Apple Stores in the United States.

Generally speaking, Mathrani said on the call, sales were up at all of the GGP malls in all categories — except electronics.

“Nearly every major retail category was up with the exception of electronics, primarily due to Apple,” Mathrani said. 

In fact, if you don’t count Apple, sales were up 4.5% among all of GGP’s smaller tenants with floor space less than 10,000 feet, he said. If you count Apple, that dips down to 3%. 

There are a lot of things we don’t know, here. For instance, this data only pertains to a small subset, less than 20% of all Apple Stores in the country. Furthermore, we don’t know how much, if at all, any kind of Apple Store slowdown contributed to Apple’s quarter, since the company doesn’t reveal retail numbers.

But the Apple Store has a certain reputation to live up to. Some mall owners give Apple Stores a break on rent, because of a belief that they draw in more customers to other stores.

If the Apple Store is stalling out growth for mall operators, that reputation will go up in a puff of smoke. And when Apple can’t take it for granted that every mall wants an Apple Store, it’ll have to face some new business realities.

Meanwhile, Mathrani made headlines today, too, when he let slip his still-unconfirmed belief that Amazon is planning on opening hundreds of physical bookstores across the country.

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