Apple Store Misdirections
by Jean-Louis Gassée
From its inception, the Apple Store delivered an implicit pledge: “This is what we think of you; this is what we think of ourselves; this is how we do things at Apple.” The message needs restating.
When Apple opened its first two Apple Stores in May 2001, throngs of critics saw Apple’s venture into the difficult realm of retail as doomed. Some comments are justifiably infamous, from the authoritative Business Week piece titled “Sorry, Steve: Here’s Why Apple Stores Won’t Work” to a puzzling barb from former Apple CFO Joe Graziano:
“Apple’s problem is it still believes the way to grow is serving caviar in a world that seems pretty content with cheese and crackers.”
(Insiders who knew Joe’s love for fine Italian prancing horses were quite amused.)
Blinded by my abiding, nostalgic love for the French Apple retailers who, paradoxically, helped me parachute into Cupertino to run the engineering side of the house, I joined the naysayers. Why is Apple competing with its sales channel? One of the two will fail and, agreeing with the day’s kommentariat, I feared it would be Apple.
We were all wrong.
The 500+ Apple Stores rose to the top of the retail industry’s revenue per square foot, binging in more than $5K/sqft/year in the US. Many of the stores are architectural landmarks designed first by Bohlin Cywinski Jackson, such as the 5th Avenue Cube, and later by Foster and Partners who, among many other projects, designed the San Francisco Union Square store (as well as Cupertino’s Apple Park office building). Other locations are also remarked upon for their careful and respectful retrofitting of historic buildings in locations such as Regent Street in London, the Opéra and Champs Élysées in Paris, and many more locations throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia.
In my recovering critic’s mind, Apple’s beautiful and well-tended stores sent a triple message: “Dear Customer… This is what we think of you. This is what we think of ourselves. And, this is how we do things at Apple.”
That message needs to be revisited. Some history…
After a happy decade running Apple Stores, Ron Johnson leaves in 2011 and is replaced by John Browett, former head of European electronics giant Dixons. One wonders what brain flatulence led Apple to hire the head of a retail chain that’s notorious for its, to be polite, barebones customer service culture. To the company’s credit, the mistake is quickly recognized and dealt with: Browett is fired after just six months on the job. To his credit, Browett acknowledges a cultural misfit and handles the firing in gentlemanly fashion.
Enter Angela Ahrendts, former CEO of Burberry. In Spring 2014, Ahrendts joins Apple as Sr VP of Retail and Online Stores, a relationship that jells right away as she quickly becomes popular with her retail troops. All is well.
But then, in 2016, Ahrendts puts a more visible imprint on Apple Stores by bringing in trees and other vegetation, and massive video screens. She also rechristens the Genius Bar as the “Genius Grove” and makes it “float”, meaning Apple experts come to you throughout the store, as opposed to sitting behind a counter. Ahrendt’s idea was to make the Apple Store a kind of town square where people would “naturally” congregate, adding a friendly social component to the store’s feel. The huge video screens pumping out Today at Apple educational and creativity sessions were intended to further humanize the experience.
Reality seems to have decided otherwise.
To start with, the Today at Apple tutorials and creation experiences are poorly attended, despite the nice little cube stools and leather ball seats. They don’t seem to have resonated with an Apple Store public that seems more interested in well-tended purchases and tech support. There are also logistical problems as the sound system is caught between two constraints: loud enough to be intelligible to the audience but without invading the rest of the store. The challenge is well known to sound professionals — and well-nigh impossible to tackle in existing Apple Store locations.
One also hears complaints about support teams overwhelmed by long lines of customers. I’ve generally been lucky, including a recent minor NTF (No Trouble Found) humiliation for having brought a “sick” MacBook whose Solid State “disk” was repeatedly found unrepairable by the Mac’s First Aid utility — only to work perfectly under the calm gaze of a Store expert. But during other visits to stores in San Francisco and Paris, I saw customers waiting and showing signs of frustration.
Perhaps it’s a seasonal affliction, connected to the holiday shopping season, but if long waits are the general case, it sends a bad message: Is this really what Apple thinks of you? Is this how they do things at Apple?
As for the Town Square concept, I wonder. In the abstract, it’s a pleasant and inviting posture, but within the walls of a retail store it feels inappropriately lofty and manufactured, perplexingly detached from reality. Actual town squares are places to congregate for activities Apple Stores aren’t designed for: eating, drinking, roller-skating, busking, vaping, and others less mentionable.
Finally, as an unrepentant lover of things retail, I see store space being squandered. For example, the Stanford Mall store features four large 10’ long tables filled with iPhones months after the Xmas season, with few shoppers fingering the goods. Some of that prime display space could be used to show off Apple’s and third parties’ under-appreciated products and accessories, thus more effectively broadcasting the Apple Ecosystem message. The same could be said of the huge amount of shelf space dedicated to sound products, Apple’s own and third parties’. Are these selling in proportion to the allocated space?
Apple Stores have become a worldwide retail industry icon — and nonpareil moneymaker. They’ve been generally well cared for, with the best of intentions. But, as Angela Ahrendts leaves and is replaced by Apple’s VP of People Deidre O’Brien, one wonders if there’s a need for more capacity as Apple’s installed base grows beyond a billion devices worldwide, and if the message needs either a return to basics, or an updated, more realistic version shorn of erroneous Town Square visions and ineffective in-store events.
— JLG@mondaynote.com
