Verizon Launches Michigan's Second 'Smart Store' In Petoskey

PETOSKEY (WWJ) -- Verizon Wireless' Petoskey store is one of 100 in the nation and the second "Smart Store" in Michigan to open this year. The new store is located 751 Spring St.

Verizon Wireless says the new stores offer additional ways to make shopping for wireless more engaging, more personalized and more streamlined for customers.

The company unveiled its first "Destination Store" Nov. 20 at The Mall of America in Minnesota. The initiative, combined with the redesign of 1,700 company-owned retail stores during the next few years such as the Petoskey Smart Store, represents a new retail approach focused on customers' mobile lifestyles.

Smart Stores showcase Verizon's 4G LTE network, which is nearly complete in Michigan, and the various ways that wireless technology can be incorporated into a customer's lifestyle needs, preferences and desires. The first Michigan store to be unveiled is located in St. Clair Shores, and opened last May.

"As wireless technology evolves, we want to help educate customers about all that wireless technology can do for them as well as make our business more personalized and streamlined," said Pat Lewis, Verizon's director of sales for Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky.

Lewis said the Smart Store in Petoskey, Michigan, is geared to showcase mobile lifestyles -- such as fitness or music-focused lifestyles -- and the devices and accessories that make these lifestyles a reality.

All of Michigan's company-owned stores will eventually be transformed into Smart Stores.