Longtime Apple Reseller Tekserve Set To Close Store, Will Continue Offering Professional Services

Tekserve, a longtime Apple reseller and technology service provider that's credited with having been a forerunner to Apple's retail stores, will close its store in late July, according to a report Thursday from The New York Times.

Tekserve, based in New York, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Tekserve was founded in 1987, well before Apple products had become a break-out success with consumers and businesses.

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The Manhattan store has provided both services for Apple devices as well as retail offerings.

Tekserve has made frequent appearances on CRN's Solution Provider 500 list and is the "largest single-site Apple Premium Service Provider in North America," according to the company.

Tekserve's service center will close July 31, the Times reported, while the retail operation will close Aug. 15. The company itself is not closing entirely, however, the firm told the Times that its corporate sales, as well as services to professionals, will remain in operation. Tekserve will also continue its services focused on small- and midsize-business customers, according to Tekserve CEO Jerry Gepner in the report.

Tekserve attributed the closure to Apple's success and to increased rents, according to the report. ’It’s not a failure of the business. It’s like this giant wave finally crashed down upon us," Gepner said.

Customers took to Twitter on Thursday to share their reactions. "One of those NY small-business rites of passage [was] a trip to Tekserve and realizing you could get your data back," Scott Macauley of Filmmaker Magazine tweeted.

The solution provider has been in the rare position as a first-hand witness to the evolution of Apple over nearly three decades -- and has also served as an insightful commentator on Apple along the way.

In 2008, for instance, a Tekserve executive told CRN after the launch of the iPhone 3G, "I think that you basically have a generation of people out there, the 20-somethings, that are wide-open to any sort of ideas that will make their life easier and more portable. They're the market that I think Apple is going directly after quite intelligently."