5th Ave Apple Store still rockin’ through the recession

While retail stores nearby are reporting that sales are down as much as 20 percent, one 5th Avenue retail location in New York is still selling gear like gangbusters. That store is Apple's underground, open 24/7 5th Avenue store in Manhattan. The store is pulling in at least $350 million a year according to recent estimate by New York real estate broker, though we have heard it might be as high as $440 million.

Apple doesn't release sales numbers for individual stores, but its retail operations have been integral to its continued success throughout the recent economic downturn. Though the company is starting to see a slowdown in sales of iPods, sales of higher-priced iPhones have mostly supplanted those sales. At least one analyst believes Apple is on track to move 2.7 million Macs this quarter—not record breaking, but up there among Apple's best quarters. And this is from the company that Microsoft's ad campaign has tried desperately to cast as "overcharging" for its products.

In fact, Apple's retail sales performance in its three Manhattan stores—Apple SVP of retail Ron Johnson said the company is "thrilled" with the numbers—is prompting the building of a fourth on the Upper West Side later this year. A number of new stores are in progress in other areas, like an additional flagship store in Chicago's Lincoln Park area, as well as store openings in cities worldwide. Those international stores are just as important to Apple, as sales abroad are becoming a larger percentage of Apple's overall performance in recent quarters.

Many pundits scoffed when Apple began its aggressive retail initiative in 2001. However, it seems as though Apple's long-term thinking has more than paid off, because its retail stores have become destinations in their own right. Tourists often flock to the stores, especially the large flagship stores like the 5th Avenue location. "I come here whenever I am in New York," a CEO from Spain told Bloomberg. Tourists used to ask how to find Bloomingdale’s, Saks and Louis Vuitton, according to Faith Hope Consolo, another New York-based real estate executive. "Now they say Apple store, Apple store," Consolo told Bloomberg. "It's the main event."