Apple’s retail guru Angela Ahrendts paid a surprise visit to Apple’s flagship retail store in Covent Garden today.
Ahrendts — who joined Apple last year and is currently the most highly-paid woman in the U.S. — praised the “positive energy” in Apple Stores, but noted that launch days amplify that feeling “about 100-fold.”
It’s hard to disagree.
Was so fun to be with the team this morning in London at the start of another exciting launch. pic.twitter.com/x38AerHkFh
— Angela Ahrendts (@AngelaAhrendts) September 25, 2015
“I think just having customers so excited about the new products, and the teams are so energised — they’ve been working, learning and training for the last couple of months and when all of that just comes together — this is what the stores were born to do,” Ahrendts said.
She also commented on the new wood-and-plants premium Apple Store redesign which recently rolled out for the first time in Brussels before expanding elsewhere.
“We are starting to test some new concepts in some of the new stores,” Ahrendts said, coyly. “I haven’t spoken publicly at all about it because these are pilots and these are tests.”
“We’re just piloting some things, and I think the overarching thing is I think you can expect the stores to become hopefully a little calmer, but yet a little more dynamic, and maybe slightly more aligned to the same feeling you get when you go into our products. Because maybe the store is really just a giant product.”
If that’s the case then — based on the number of people in Apple Stores across the world today — it’s most definitely a product everyone wants.
Source: Irish Examiner
Luke Dormehl is a U.K.-based journalist and author, with a background working in documentary film for Channel 4 and the BBC. He is the author of The Apple Revolution and The Formula: How Algorithms Solve All Our Problems … and Create More, both published by Penguin/Random House. His tech writing has also appeared in Wired, Fast Company, Techmeme and other publications.
One response to “Angela Ahrendts checks out the iPhone 6s launch in London”
“Guru” is probably not the best word to describe Ms. Ahrendts, at least as far as her role at Apple is concerned.
Let’s evaluate her contributions to the Apple Store formula. Steve Jobs invented Apple Stores to give customers, and more precisely perspective buyers, the chance to try Apple’s products. That was a giant leap, because at the time Apple’s computers were a bit of a mythical concept for most of people. Giving customers the chance to spend time with their next computer was a very good choice. Again, the reason behind that choice was closing the perceived gap between Apple and its customers.
When Apple Watch was launched during the Ahrendts’ era, it subverted Steve Jobs’ original Apple Store concept. The watches are displayed behind glass, or locked in partially functional displays that don’t give customers the chance to actually weigh the device.
But with so many clerks, trying on the watch should be a breeze, right? Wrong! During the first weeks, no matter how many people were actually queueing, customers were asked to book an appointment (even if the queue was ZERO) and give up their email address, BEFORE trying on the watch. And even if they liked it, they had to ORDER it and come back at a later time to pick it up.
What’s the reason behind this? Probably the need to market the new product as exclusive and much coveted. The first product launch supervised by Ms. Ahrendts says: “dear customer, let us decide whether you’re good enough to TOUCH, let alone purchase our product”.
Did this “brilliant” strategy work? Not at all. Apple is now peddling watches through every possible outlet: Mediamarkt in Europe, Curry’s in the UK, phone companies, you name it. All at once, the Apple Watch is not a niche product anymore, and soon you’ll get one in every box of Cheerios.
Would that be necessary if the product were actually successful? No. Does this strategy match the “exclusive fashion item” ethos? Of course not. Did the “this is an exclusive products you might not be good enough to buy” strategy work? Well, if it did, it would still be enforced.
Today, any run-of-the-mill customer can just pop into an Apple Store (or any major electronics retail store), drop their cash or plastic and leave with a not-so-exclusive-anymore Apple Watch. Suddenly, the Apple Watch is no longer VIP-only.
Again, this is definitely NOT the first time Apple dramatically changed course, but thanks to the public’s goldfish memory, and to the unstoppable success of Apple, it won’t put any noticeable dent in the company’s finances.
But is this kind of advice worth what Ms. Ahrendts is getting paid? As Jon Gruber recently noted, the obsession for diversity at all costs is detrimental to quality. Companies have to focus on hiring the best people for a job even if they do not belong to a “minority” (why women are considered a minority is a mystery, since there are more women than men on earth), not the best politically-acceptable figure.
Of course it is easy to second guess a strategy with the benefit of hindsight, but trying to completely reverse course for a company whose efforts during the last 15 years have been to get closer to the user base is plain irresponsible.
This is what happens when you believe that someone who is good at selling a specific product must be good at selling ANY product. That is seldom the case. You cannot pass a mass-produced Chinese watch for a rare and valuable item in the same way you can trick customers into spending $500 on a Chinese-manufactured garment that cost you $5. There is no craftsmanship involved in the watch manufacturing process, no matter how well designed it might be (even though the ugly and oversized digital crown is plain to see). This is not a Swiss watch, it is not even a reliable and inexpensive Japanese automatic watch. There are no hundreds of tiny components assembled by hand by an experienced Swiss watchmaker, but rather 4 or 5 silicon chips and a battery glued to the case by an underpaid and possibly suicidal Foxconn employee. The watch will be totally unusable because incompatible with current devices in 5 years, ready for the landfill in 6.
It is preposterous to market it as anything different than a gadget with a 365-day lifespan. It took 6 months to Ms. Ahrendts to figure it. There are many students fresh out of business school who could have done a much better job for several dozen million bucks less.