Motorola opening its first brick-and-mortar ’boutique’ retail store in Chicago this week

Motorola is opening its very first physical retail store later this week. Moto Shop, as it’s called, is opening in downtown Chicago, the company’s hometown, on Saturday, November 7, in time for holiday shopping to begin. In its blog post, the company notes that because smartphones and wearables have made powerful technology more personal, you should be able to go and experience them fully, in real life. Moto wants to make the shopping experience as personal as it can…

In advance of the grand opening, Motorola has shown off what you can expect to find in the first Moto Shop. Unlike a lot of gadget stores, this is all about the experience of the devices rather than their technical specifications and abilities. That means you’ll find a desk with all the materials available in Motorola’s Moto Maker tool, as well as an area for taking a professional picture with the Moto X Pure‘s camera. As well as those, you’ll also find a portion of hard tiled floor ready and waiting for you to drop (or spike) a DROID Turbo 2 on, showing off how durable the screen is.

In much of its styling and layout, it doesn’t really look like a tech store. Motorola describes it as an ‘experiential boutique’, and has built in ‘dedicated areas that bring to life’ its ‘marquee products and device features’. From the pictures, I’m not entirely sure I like it. I don’t know whether I’m looking at a jewelry store, hardware store or phone store when I see all the individual areas. It’s hard to see how all these segments fit together cohesively in to one store. Maybe they’re not supposed to.

The store is located at 108 N. State St (Suite 140 at Block 37), downtown Chicago and — as already mentioned — opens on Saturday, November 7th. There’s also going to be a grand opening celebration on November 14th. Regular opening hours will be 10am to 8pm Monday through Saturday and 11am to 6pm on Sundays. Now you can go have a look at all the beautiful Horween pebbled leather for yourself. As long as you’re a Chicagoan or in the neighborhood.