Apple has created a retail space that matches their products on the cool factore. You get to shop in pure retail bliss with an excellent customer experience. Apple has been producing an amazing $4,032 per square foot compared to Saks at $362 per Sq Foot and Best Buy at $930. Next in line would be Tiffany & Co bringing in $2,666 per square foot. But Apple is eating everyone’s lunch.
“I started to get scared,” says Jobs. Looking angularly trim in his trademark mock turtleneck and jeans (shopping, one is reminded, has never been integral to his lifestyle), Jobs is describing what he saw circa 2000. The company was increasingly dependent on mega-retailers – companies that had little incentive, never mind training, to position Apple’s products as anything unique. “It was like, ‘We have to do something, or we’re going to be a victim of the plate tectonics. And we have to think different about this. We have to innovate here.’”
The leap into retail, though, would be from a standing start. “We looked at it and said, ‘You know, this is probably really hard, and really easy for us to get our head handed to us.’ So we did a few things. No. 1, I started asking who was the best retail executive at the time. Everybody said Mickey Drexler, who was running the Gap.” Drexler agreed to join Apple’s board. Next, Jobs went looking for the one right person to run Apple retail. The answer was Ron Johnson, then a merchandising chief at Target who was pushing that company’s hugely successful foray into affordable design.