“Apple Computer is firing on all cylinders these days, but of all the things contributing to its success, hardly anyone mentions its chain of retail stores. The stores are as important to Apple as the iPod or OS X when it comes to driving the public’s extraordinary interest in the resurgent company — though it’s hard to say which is more important, because they’re interrelated,” Leander Kahney writes for Wired News. “Switching to the Mac is not a decision to be taken lightly, and the Apple store is where this mental transition takes place. Lately, there are lots of people making the switch. Sales of Mac computers are up — despite the ongoing Intel transition — and more than 50 percent of customers at its stores are ‘new to Mac,’ Apple chief Steve Jobs said at Macworld.”
“Consider this: Apple says its stores are now making more than $1 billion in sales per quarter. Just two years ago, the stores were making $1 billion a year — and at that time they were the fastest-growing retail operation in history, beating the previous record holder The Gap to $1 billion annual sales in just three years, according to Ron Johnson, the executive in charge of Apple’s retail operations. The company’s 136 stores now account for about 17 percent of its total revenue… Apple says the stores are attracting up to 10,000 visitors per week each, or 18.1 million visitors a year in total.” Kahney writes. “These are extraordinary figures.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Note: Want a laugh? Check out Channel Marketing Corp’s David Goldstein’s May 2001 Apple Retail Stores prediction, “I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.” [Thanks to Kahney for reminding us about it in his full article.]
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