“Apple’s glass-cube stores have become as familiar as Subway sandwich shops. But when Steve Jobs opened the first in 2001, the retail venture was expected to fail,” Belinda Lanks writes for Businessweek. “‘I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake,’ Apple’s former chief financial officer [sic], Joseph Goldstein, told BusinessWeek.”
MacDailyNews Note: Obviously, the vast majority of Apple retail Stores are not what anyone in their right mind would describe as “glass cube stores.” Also, David — not “Joseph” — Goldstein, was at the time of his quote the president of Channel Marketing Corp. Goldstein was never “Apple’s former chief financial officer.” Lanks is confusing him with former Apple CFO Joseph “We should put Apple up for sale” Graziano, who was also quite confused about Apple Retail Stores at the time.
“Apple has 423 stores, as of March, and it makes more money in sales per square foot—$4,551—than any other U.S.-based retailer, according to EMarketer RETAIL,” Lanks writes. “I talked recently with 8’s Tim Kobe—the designer who worked closely with Jobs to create the computer store’s iconic look—about how Apple changed the retail landscape. From that conversation, five lessons emerged as to what businesses can learn from Apple’s then-outlandish example.”
• Prototype far, far away.
• Avoid established partners.
• The product is not the most important thing.
• Obsess over the smallest details.
• Change it up.
Read more in the full article here.