MacSuperstore in SLO is closing at end of the week
Locally owned San Luis Obispo business MacSuperstore is closing its doors Saturday after 18 years.
Shane Williams, who owns the store with his wife, Brenda, said the shop had been a struggle financially over the past two or three years. The decision to close had been a long time coming, he said, adding that they decided to close before the holiday shopping season as the last two holiday seasons hadn’t brought “a lot of good results profitwise.”
The MacSuperstore opened in 1998, and in 2011 moved to its current 5,000-square-foot location next to Target at 11982 Los Osos Valley Road.
“I hate to go out this way, but I think it’s always better to go out under your own decision,” Williams said. “It’s been a good ride. I met a lot of great people through it.”
Williams attributes the closure to several factors, including changes in the industry and in how people shop; box stores and online sites offering products at heavily discounted prices; the dependability of Apple products; and the company’s expansion to three other markets in Santa Barbara, Monterey and Colorado Springs, Colorado. He declined to disclose financial information.
The Monterey store closed in June, and another dealer who offers many of the same products and services took over the Colorado Springs store in September. Within the next couple of weeks the Santa Barbara store will transition to another company that will take on the service side of the operation.
Although the Apple Store’s arrival in downtown San Luis Obispo in 2007 did impact their business, Williams said it prompted him and his wife to move to a better location (their current spot), which improved sales and service volume. The recession had a much bigger impact on the business than the Apple Store, Williams said, as it changed the way that people buy, making it much more price-centered.
Williams said he tries not to focus on mistakes made along the way, and added that, “assuming that other markets were just like San Luis Obispo, and that we would succeed in other markets ... (we) took our eye off the ball of how to be just San Luis Obispo.” He said the expansion set them on a path that didn’t allow them to regroup and change the business model.
He said he thinks there’s parts of the business that could be done by themselves in a much smaller way that could be profitable; however, selling hardware is not a winning solution. Williams said there’s an opportunity in the area for a small service shop to do things that Apple doesn’t do.
He’s unsure of what his next step will be, and said that retail takes a lot of energy.
“It’s hard giving everything you can to customers and getting everything you can out of vendors,” Williams said.
The San Luis Obispo MacSuperstore staffs about 20 employees, most full time. The store is having a going out of business sale until it closes its doors Saturday; it will have a “garage sale” to sell fixtures, “infrastructure stuff and a hodge podge of items” on Dec. 10.
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This story was originally published November 28, 2016 at 10:26 AM with the headline "MacSuperstore in SLO is closing at end of the week."