Inside Steve's Brain - Leander Kahney [75]
On the other hand, Jobs wanted to bring customers into the store. He wanted a “lifestyle” store where customers could get a taste of the Apple digital lifestyle—and hopefully leave with a machine. One of the key early decisions was to locate the stores in high-traffic areas. This first decision proved to be the breakthrough but was initially universally criticized, because popular locations would be expensive.
Apple chose high-end malls and trendy shopping districts, not low-rent strip malls on the edge of town. The idea was to get foot traffic, to build the kind of store where the curious could drop in and learn what it’s like on the other side, the Mac side. If most computer shoppers didn’t even consider Apple when buying a new computer, they certainly weren’t going to drive twenty minutes to a remote store in a remote parking lot. “The real estate was a lot more expensive,” Jobs told Fortune. But people “didn’t have to gamble with 20 minutes of their time. They only had to gamble with 20 footsteps of their time.”32 It’s the old real estate mantra—location, location, location.
Apple planned the locations very carefully using census data and information about its registered customers. Apple has never revealed the criteria it uses for choosing store locations, but Gary Allen, a close watcher of Apple’s retail strategy who runs ifoAppleStore.com., a website devoted to the chain, has pieced together some of the company’s process. According to Allen, it’s a combination of the number of registered Apple customers in the area, certain demographics, particularly age and average household income, and proximity to major schools and universities, and—cleverly—major interstate highways.
The biggest problem Apple faced was finding a space in suitable malls. Apple waited three years for a good location in San Francisco, the company’s hometown.
In an early strategy meeting with Jobs, Ron Johnson was presented with Apple’s entire product line: two portable computers and two desktop computers. This was before the launch of the iPod. Johnson was faced with the prospect of filling 6,000-square-foot stores with just four products. “And that was a challenge,” Johnson recalled. “But it ended up being the ultimate opportunity, because we said, ‘Because we don’t have enough products to fill a store that size, let’s fill it with the ownership experience.’”33
When Jobs and Johnson started thinking about the stores, they started with an unusual vision—to “enrich lives,” Johnson said. “When we envisioned Apple’s retail model, we said it’s got to connect with Apple. Very easy . . . enrich lives. Enriching lives. That’s what Apple has been doing for 30-plus years.”34
The goal to enrich lives led to two clear objectives: to design the stores around the customer experience, and to be aware of the ownership experience for the lifetime of the product.
First, designing the store around the customer experience is not the same as designing around the retail experience. Most retailers concentrate on how customers find and select items in the store, and then get them to spend as much as possible. But Jobs and Johnson asked themselves how the products would fit into the context of customers’ lives, their life experience.
Johnson explained: “We didn’t think about their experience in the store. We said, ‘Let’s design this store around their life experience.’ ”
Second, “We said, we want our stores to create an ownership experience for the customer,” explained Johnson. The store should be about the lifetime of the product, not the moment of the transaction. At many stores, the purchase ends the relationship with the store. At Apple stores, “We like to think that’s where it begins.”
“So first we made a list,” Johnson said. “Enrich lives—how do you do it?” They decided the store should carry only the right stuff. Too much merchandise confuses customers. Johnson learned the