Apple stores struggled until the release of the iPod music player, which made even Windows users curious enough to wander inside. Apple has become one of the world’s most valuable companies because of its products: the Mac, the iPad, the Apple Watch and most especially the iPhone. But the company’s product sales have been aided over the past 25 years by the presence of its iconic brand in more than 500 retail stores scattered across 27 countries and regions.
Anyone who has ducked into an Apple store for a new iPhone or toted a broken Mac through the mall for a repair appointment at the Genius Bar has experienced what Steve Jobs and Ron Johnson built. In “Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius,” Mr. Johnson details the remarkable story of how, in 1999, Jobs recruited him from Target to join Apple as head of retail and launch perhaps the biggest long shot of Jobs’s entire tenure as chief executive.
Mr. Johnson cuts the profile of the perfect retail executive. Born in Minnesota, he was entranced as a child by the Midwestern, midcentury power of Dayton’s department store. When Apple hired Mr. Johnson in 2000, he was based in Minnesota and didn’t own a computer. (Jobs sent him an iMac.) But Mr. Johnson had retail experience Apple lacked, and Jobs seems to have identified in Mr. Johnson an enthusiasm for the project that matched his own.
They agreed to model the store’s approach to customers on the Ritz-Carlton hotel chain, rather than a traditional retail outlet, which led to the concierge-like experience of the Genius Bar. Many stores struggled until Jobs’s product pipeline came to the rescue.
Source: Wall Street Journal US Business · Summarized by HeadlinesBriefing