The lines for the Apple Watch were similar to the lines for every other Apple product, with one main difference:

While the atmosphere outside the store was generally similar to previous launches, a glaring difference was the fact that I wasn’t waiting outside of an Apple Store. I was sitting on the sidewalk outside of the upscale fashion boutique Maxfield, on trendy Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles.

And:

Some things, though, were still off. Gone was the infamous clapping and cheering that comes with an Apple launch, replaced by the Maxfield employees monkishly ushering customers in one at a time. It almost seemed like Apple and Maxfield had somehow divided up responsibilities, and each applied their signature “culture” to the process.

There’s an irony in all of this. Apple’s previous Retail Chief, Ron Johnson, spent the better part of a decade building out Apple’s presence to almost 500 stores, so customers could line up around the world to be the first to get new Apple products.

Now, in the first big launch under the Ahrendts regime, the company decided to forgo the entire Apple retail system, forcing Apple fans make a pilgrimage to a store they most likely will never visit again. Unless Apple decides that the Apple Watch 2 is also too fashionable to be launched in an Apple store near you.

I find the logic of this outside the Apple Store rollout fascinating. The sense I get is that Apple is trying to extend the tendrils of the iPhone ecosystem. The iPhone itself is sold in a number of different retail outlets, but there was never a time you couldn’t buy one in the Apple Store.

One thought is that these luxury retailers are familiar (Angela Ahrendts was a longtime CEO of Burberry and knows luxury retail like the back of her hand) as well as properly equipped to handle this sort of luxury item.

Apple clearly intends to sell the Apple Watch in the Apple Store. Were the stores just not equipped to sell the Apple Watch on launch day? Or was this more a chance to give these other luxury retailers a head start to build a market? Or maybe a bit of both?