I missed that there's a DJI / Hasselblad store now in Germany. But you are right, here's the launch video from a few months ago. They mention it is the first (in a shopping mall, sandwiched between the Body Shop and Levis), so more may come. I also saw that there's now one in Munich, although not sure if there's a Hasselblad section in the back already. Wouldn't be surprised to see a rollout in London, Berlin, Paris, Rome, etc.
A young influencer type with a Fuji rangefinder camera around his neck is lauding the store as a dream place to nerd out on gear. Seems like the concept is to be a carbon copy of the Apple store's design with grey, wood elements. They just copied Apple's approach to the T.
The Hasselblad corner comes at the end of the store behind the drone section.
Seeing this, the strategy and consumer focus becomes clearer and clearer. This is not the kind of store where you discuss Rodenstock or SK glass compatibility with the CFV100c. The twenty something underpaid sales clerk probably never heard of Schneider Kreuznach lenses. Similar to Leica, the prosumers walks in here to buy a premium compact camera, similarly like you'd buy an M.
It looks more like a place where you grab the Hasselblad product and a drone before your next travel trip after having seen the youtube review and the young sales person has received a crash course on the photo product range a week before starting.
Next step is to fully integrate drones / camera sales in self-branded stores in key locations; the Moon landing is featured as a nice brand asset in the back.
Also looks like DJI is in the driver seat given the stores are called DJI / Hasselblad and drones are front and centre towards the steet. Even the product info tables with modular pricing options look like iPhone pricing signs in Apple stores where you see the different pricing tiers sorted by storage tier. Quite brazen copying there.
The female store rep that's interviewed mentions that they have representatives from DJI management present - no mention of anyone from Hasselblad out of Sweden. All employees, even those at the back standing in the Hasselblad corner, wear DJI branded polos. Sometimes, with store-in-store, you will have clerks wearing shirts with different brands to signal who to talk to, but looks like the Hasselblad world is now fully integrated into the DJI world in terms of the employees and sales concept in the store.
People featured in the store are video production company owners and the female store rep also mentions they have invited a lot of influencers.
Independent legacy Hasselblad dealers in such a constellation are of course welcome to place orders of their customers - so they are a sort of "nice to have" in the overall strategy , but that's it. The writing is on the wall of whats next and where the focus lies.
From this perspective it looks like DJI wants to fully own the physical sales channel like Leica, go full on consumer, and only refrains from stepping on toes where market power is still seen as too strong - e.g. B&H. The smaller protagonists are slowly squeezed out via supply chain manipulation.
That's a rather big shift and nothing short of an existential threat to the classic pro independent dealer segment and DJI comes full circle with its acquisition and re-positioning of Hasselblad as a lifestyle luxury camera brand in the style of Leica. There was a time where you needed to make an appointment with a specialist dealer outside the city to get shown a H system if you wanted to see one in action; now you grab a camera on Saturday at your local mall in between a Starbucks break and some strolling clothes shops.
I've owned a H system back in the late 2000s and the sales rep personally drove to my home to give me a multi-hour introduction into my newly acquired H50 camera system. That now looks like a distant memory from a different era (same sales rep went on to work for P1, got fired last year, and now sells solar panels).
The only thing we as customers can do is directly support CI and the likes and not buy from the webshop or walk-in shop in the next mall. I will never. buy anything in an apple-esque setting where the employee has no clue about what they are selling and where I am on top upsold on a 800 buck drone that gets replaced next year with the next gen model anyhow.
Sadly, this is precisely what I expected to happen once DJI acquired Hasselblad.
Given P1's price point and them being a B2B player first its unlikely that we'll ever see a P1 store besides a Levi's store.