“After Apple public relations released a statement calling staffing cutbacks at its Apple Stores a ‘mistake’ that was being reversed, many thought that John Browett’s days at the company might be numbered,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“But Browett is still running the shops, and a new report suggests that he was just following orders — orders that came all the way from the top,” P.E.D. reports. “Once again, ifoAppleStore’s Allen has the scoop:”
[Former retail chief Ron] Johnson was champion of customer satisfaction, designing and staffing the stores to provide a superior experience for visitors and buyers alike. He was able to win over Steve Jobs with the concept that revenue and profit should be a secondary goal of Apple’s retail stores.
But in 2009, Jobs took six months of medical leave and put Tim Cook in charge of the company, including the retail stores. Cook is primarily an “operations guy,” sources explain, and his natural focus is revenues and profits, not customers. While Jobs was away, Cook and chief financial officer Peter Oppenheimer began to confront Johnson on his customer-centric retail philosophy—both felt the stores didn’t generate enough revenues to justify operating expenses.
Last year when Cook became the permanent CEO, he hired Browett from UK-based Dixons to head the retail chain. Cook was apparently attracted by Browett’s like-minded focus on the more traditional concepts of retailing—logic and process leading to revenues and profits. With his new position as CEO and staffed with a revenue-focused Sr. VP, Cook naturally moved the retail operation in different directions, the sources say, resulting in last month’s staffing changes.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: This sort of thinking is a cancer that will eat away at Apple all the way to the core.
As we wrote on August 17, 2012:
This… type of “thinking” will kill Apple faster than 10 lines of beige Performas.
If Cook can’t see that clearly, he needs to go, too.
Concerned Apple shareholders might want to email CEO Tim Cook directly and ask him what exactly he’s doing… tcook@apple.com
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