Apple retail personnel will be back on the road next month as the company opens its first retail store of year on Saturday, March 9, 2002.
The company chose Southpoint in central North Carolina to be the first store opening of 2002. Southpoint is 5 minutes from Research Triangle Park, 10 minutes from Chapel Hill and 20 minutes from Raleigh, according to information provided by Apple. The store is located at 8030 Renaissance Pkwy STE 835.
The shopping center that Apple chose to open their retail store in has its grand opening on Friday. The Apple Store will be open on Friday, but the grand opening will not be until Saturday. If you do wander in on Friday, you won’t get the commemorative t-shirt that has become so popular during previous openings. The t-shirts will only be available to those that attend the grand opening on Saturday.
Apple committed to opening 25 retail stores in 2001; by the end of the year, the company had opened 27 throughout the U.S. In his Macworld keynote address in January, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that the 27 stores had 800,000 visitors in the month of December alone.