Time Warner Cable Launches ‘Experience Store’ in Eagle Rock

Eagle Rock doesn’t have an Apple store. But it has something darned close—and every bit as state-of-the-art: A new Time Warner Cable interactive “Experience Store.”

On Friday, Time Warner Cable launched its fifth so-called “experience store” in Southern California—smack in the heart of Eagle Rock.

The store had a ribbon-cutting ceremony Friday, a little more than a week after it opened May 29 in Suite A of 4945 Eagle Rock Blvd., in the same shopping mall Super A and Panda Express are located, and from where the Chase Bank branch relocated to Colorado Boulevard last year.

The store offers customers an opportunity to have a hands-on experience with a variety of services and products such as smart phones, iPads, laptops and video merchandize instead of interacting with Time Warner Cable on the Internet or over the phone.

“Our new Experience Stores are an important way we’re connecting with our customers in the local communities,” Scott Mounce, Time Warner Cable’s vice president of business operations, said in a prepared statement. “As we continue to introduce new product technologies and features, such as the TWC TV app, our newly designed stores will serve as a resource for customers to better understand everything we have to offer.”

Ramona Henderson, director of TW Cable Stores, explained why Time Warner Cable had chosen a shopping mall on the less prominent of Eagle Rock's two major boulevards.

"What we’re trying to do is focus on what we call a retail-centric environment, meaning that we’re talking about products and services and wanting to give our customers the opportunity to touch and feel," she said. "An office building, such as what we found a lot of on Colorado [Boulevard] doesn’t give us that opportunity."

Added Henderson: "We also wanted to make sure that we offered easy access to our customers in a place where they could come in, park and walk in. That’s why this was an ideal place for us in Eagle Rock."

Asked if Time Warner Cable's presence might help enhance the stature of the shopping mall, Henderson said that the company does "hope that this will be of some advantage to the neighborhood in terms of us being here." But "we also want to go where our customers are—and we want to let our customers know that we want to service them better than we’ve done previously," she added.

Besides Spanish-speaking staff members headed by a Spanish-speaking manager, the new store has already begun to feature Spanish-language display signs.

In addition to the ribbon cutting, Time Warner Cable made donations to two Eagle Rock organizations—the Greater Los Angeles Agency on Deafness and the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts—as well as to the Audubon Society.

Besides Eagle Rock, Time Warner Cable has Experience Stores in Glendora, Orange County, San Bernardino and Torrance. A sixth Experience Store is scheduled to open soon at the Beverly Connection at the Beverly Connection on La Cienega Boulevard.