Not only are Apple Stores some of the most popular retail stores on the planet, they’re also the most successful. This year Apple Stores have continued to outpace the entire industry, and as a result Apple is now making more money per visitor than ever before.
According to some analysis by Horace Dediu at Asymco, last quarter the number of Apple Store visitors grew 7%, and as a result Apple earned a record of $57.60 in revenue from each visitor.
Former Apple Retail Chief Ron Johnson’s time at JC Penney was not a good one for the company. Johnson tried to revamp the retailer’s image from a clearing house for cheap junk sold at discounted prices during an endless spree of “sales” and “coupons” into a refined boutique, a store-within-a-store retail concept similar to the Apple Store.
The result? A $12.99 billion year-over-year decline in revenue that got Johnson fired as CEO after his first year on the job. And if that’s not bad enough, JC Penney is now adding insult to injury by releasing a commercial apologizing for the changes he made.
For the many years I lived in Berlin, one of the perpetual frustrations I had was that there was no Apple Store in the city to shop at. A few weeks after I moved, Apple leased a historical theater in West Berlin’s Kurfürstendamm and started renovating it to be the country’s biggest Apple Store.
Now the scaffolding’s coming off, ahead of the official launch, and iFun.de not only has some great pictures of the process of the newest Apple Store being revealed… there’s some video of the inside. Video after the jump.
John Browett, who spent nine months as Apple’s senior vice president of retail before being ousted alongside Scott Forstall last October, has admitted that he “just didn’t fit” in with the way Apple ran its business. Browett still feels Apple is a fantastic company and says he loved working there, but he told The Independent that he was ”rejected for fit rather than competency.”
In France, the proletariat is not a force to be trifled with. There are expectations on how companies are to treat workers: whether there are enough golden crusted, freshly baked baguettes in the breakroom, for example, or how many fromage breaks one gets per hour. “Vive les grenouilles!” the workers cry, sousing themselves silly with wine.
It’s a good system, but Apple has fallen afoul of it, with seven Apple Stores in France now being rapped on the knuckles for violating a French law that prohibits employers from making their workers work past nine PM at night.
You know those black balls in the kid’s section of the Apple Store? Yeah, you probably shouldn’t sit on them: underneath the fabric exterior, they are essentially gigantic sponges soaked with the pee of a thousand children with such weak bladder control that they just hose off when they get excited, even in the Apple Store.
Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture of one black ball Apple was getting rid of after a bunch of kids had whizzed all over it. As the former Apple employee and Redditor who posted it says: “Just one of the nasty little “ewwws” lurking in arguable the coolest retail environments around.”
Apple has stopped selling the Mac Pro through its European online stores ahead of the machine’s discontinuation throughout the EU on March 1. Although the high-end desktop still appears on Apple’s website, it’s listed as “currently unavailable,” and customers are unable to order it. Some models are still available in the refurbished section, however.
How does one go from leading the most profitable retail division in the world to a London-based clothing retailer? Just ask John Browett. He spent less than six months as Apple’s senior VP of retail. Before Tim Cook brought him on at the beginning of 2012, Browett was the CEO of Dixons in Britain. After getting fired this past fall, Browett has returned to his roots.
