Over the course of last week, Huawei flew 16 journalists to Europe. The first thing that we did was tour the company's flagship store in Milan, Italy; after that, we headed to Leica headquarters in Frankfurt, Germany; and finally, we headed to Paris to check out Huawei Aesthetics.
Most importantly, the trip provided insight into Huawei as a company, along with what it has planned moving forward.
But as I mentioned, the first stop was the flagship store in Milan.
The first thing that you'll see upon entering the store is a display with the Huawei P20 Pro and the Mate 10 Porsche Design. Customers can rotate between the two devices simply by waving their hand over the setup. If you try to reach for it, the device flips over.
You won't be surprised to learn that the device is surrounded by information about it on the LCD screens.
To the right of the entrance by the Huawei logo, there are plants and lit of LED flowers.
Below them are various charging stations. Customers can come in and hang out while their device charges. Huawei offers both USB Type-C and micro-USB charging solutions (sorry iPhone users).
You'll notice that the petals are the same Huawei petals that are in the company's logo. This is a general design theme of the store, as you can also see from the ceiling and the shapes of the tables..
Another thing that you can see upon entry into the store is that there are LED lights that light up when you step on the mat.
One of my favorite things about the Huawei store is that you can have them print designs directly onto your Huawei device, or you can have a custom case made. Unfortunately, they'll only print a design directly onto your device if you've got one that's made of metal, so I had to go with a case for my P20 Pro. Also, the MateBook X Pro isn't in the system, as it's not out in Italy yet (that's why you'll see OG MateBook X PCs on display).
Huawei offers a variety of images that you can use, or you can use your own image that's transferred to the system via Bluetooth. After you choose your image and crop it how you like, you can also choose a 3D texture for your case or device 'tattoo'.
The price for the service is €15 for the tattoo directly on the device, or €24 for the custom case.
Next, to that, Huawei is offering a variety of audio devices. One that was demoed for us was a pair of bands that let you make music based on your movements.
Beyond that, Huawei showed us its MediaPad M5 devices, where it has DJ software set up, allowing customers to play with music mixing.
Huawei's flagship store in Italy doesn't just sell products either. The company offers events and workshops. Events are listed on the store's website, and workshops can be found in a catalog that you can grab from the store.
Examples of workshops include black and white photography, street photography, storytelling and photography, the portrait, studio photography, video making, and even yoga. All of them are aimed at users with different devices. For example, the yoga class is for those with a Huawei Band 2 Pro, the photography classes are for those with a P20 Pro, and the video making workshop with for those with both a P20 Pro and a MediaPad M5 Pro.
The Huawei Europe Tour didn't end in Milan though. On the next day, we headed over to Frankfurt and then went to Wetzlar in Germany to tour Leica's facilities. Stay tuned for the next part of this series for that.
Gallery: Huawei Flagship Store
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