From Risky Bet to Retail Giant: Apple Store Turns 24 Today

Twenty-four years agone today, Apple embarked connected what galore manufacture experts considered a risky task that would yet alteration not conscionable the company's fortunes, but retail itself. On May 19, 2001, Apple opened its archetypal retail store astatine Tysons Corner Center successful Virginia, with Steve Jobs personally showing the property astir the revolutionary space.


Some 500 anxious visitors lined up earlier dawn to acquisition the store's hardwood floors, agleam lighting, and cleanable lines. The aesthetic drew comparisons to trendy covering retailer Gap. Not surprising, fixed that Gap CEO Mickey Drexler had been connected Apple's committee for 2 years astatine that point.

The determination to participate brick-and-mortar retail came astatine a precarious clip for Apple. With a marketplace stock hovering astir 2.8%, the institution was struggling to efficaciously showcase its products done third-party retailers, wherever Macs were often relegated to corners and staffed by clerks with minimal merchandise knowledge.

Jobs believed Apple would ne'er shed its "cult" representation unless it could power the full lawsuit experience, close down to the infinitesimal of purchase. In Walter Isaacson's eponymous biography of the erstwhile Apple CEO, Jobs said: "Unless we could find ways to get our connection to customers astatine the store, we were screwed."

On Target

To pb this vision, Jobs recruited Ron Johnson, who had transformed Target's representation with his decorator merchandise line. Together, they crafted the store conception successful a concealed warehouse prototype, refining each item from the single-entrance layout to the revolutionary Genius Bar, inspired by Johnson's experiences astatine Ritz-Carlton hotels.

Apple's committee initially balked astatine the idea, particularly aft Gateway had conscionable closed 40 of its ain stores and Apple's income had dropped 29% the erstwhile year. Industry analysts were adjacent much skeptical: Channel Marketing expert David Goldstein famously foretell Apple would beryllium "turning retired the lights connected a precise achy and costly mistake" wrong 2 years.

Instead, by 2003, Apple recorded $3 cardinal successful nett per store, per quarter, with astir 60,000 visitors astatine each location. In 2004, Apple Retail deed $1.2 billion, breaking the grounds for the fastest billion-dollar milestone successful retail history.


Today, Apple operates 534 stores crossed 27 countries, with each determination generating astir $5,500 per quadrate ft annually – among the highest successful the retail industry. What began arsenic a arguable gamble has go a cornerstone of Apple's occurrence and a blueprint for experiential retail that competitors proceed to emulate.
This article, "From Risky Bet to Retail Giant: Apple Store Turns 24 Today" archetypal appeared connected MacRumors.com

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