User:Ardarley/sandbox

History
Steve Jobs, the co-founder of Apple, returned as interim CEO in 1997. According to Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson, Jobs began a concerted campaign to help sales by improving the retail presentation of Macintosh computers. Even with new products launched under Job's watch like the iMac and the PowerBook G3 and an online store, Apple still relied heavily on big box computer and electronics stores for most of their sales. There, customers continued to deal with poorly trained and ill-maintained Mac sections that did not foster customer loyalty to Apple and did not help differentiate the Mac user-experience from Windows.

Jobs' first push into retail upon returning to Apple was a study for stand alone "store within a store" for 34 sites in Japan. These sites were designed by Eight Inc. who was designing the Apple MacWorld and product launch events with Apple. This study became the validation for Apple’s retail market appeal and prototypes began for CompUSA which retained its Apple contract by agreeing to adopt Apple's "store within a store" concept designed by Eight Inc. This required that approximately 15% of each CompUSA store would be set aside for Mac hardware and software (including non-Apple products) and would play host to a part-time Apple salesperson. Jobs recognized the limitations of third party retailing and began investigating options to change the model. Tim Kobe of Eight Inc. prepared an “Apple Retail” white paper for Jobs outlining the virtues of separate Apple retail stores as a core touch point to directly drive the Apple brand experience based on their recently completed work with The North Face and Nike, other manufacturers, like Apple making the transition into independently controlled branded retail as part of their overall retail strategy.

Jobs knew the Apple retail program had to fundamentally change the relationship to the customer and provide more control over the presentation of Apple products and the Apple brand message. In 1999 Jobs retained Eight Inc. as the strategic retail design partner to begin creating the Apple retail store and began the search for senior retail and development executives.

In 1999, Jobs personally recruited Millard Drexler to serve on Apple's board of directors, Drexler was the CEO of Gap Inc. whose explosive growth had been attributed to retailing environments and marketing rather than its products or competitive prices. Drexler was one of the few directors who supported Jobs' retail stores initiative, the others on the board were skeptical as this would compete with third-party retailers, and also as Gateway, Inc. had struggled with its own stores. In 2000, Jobs hired Ron Johnson from Target, where he had been vice president of merchandising responsible for launching the Michael Graves line of consumer products that raised Target's image beyond that of just an upscale K-Mart. At Drexler's suggestion, the retail team and development team headed by Allen Moyer, from The Walt Disney Company then began a series of mock-ups for the Apple store inside a warehouse near the company's headquarters in Cupertino.

On May 15, 2001, Jobs hosted a press event at Apple's first store at the Tysons Corner Center mall in Tysons Corner, Virginia. Jobs led a group of journalists from a hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia, to Apple's first store in the second level of Tysons Corner Center for a commemorative press event. The first two Apple Stores opened on May 19 in Tysons Corner and the same day in Glendale, California at Glendale Galleria. The first Apple Store with the current layout and hardware (wood tables and stone flooring) opened in Pasadena, California.

The Apple retail program established its merits and the momentum provided by the introduction of the iPod drove enormous interest in the Apple brand. The “High Profile” retail stores began the initiation of the Flagship style component of the Apple retail strategy. The first high profile store was in Soho in New York City and was launched to great success. Store sales were double projections the first year with massive crowds and record sales. The iconic New York 5th Avenue store opened in 2002 became the punctuation to the world that Apple retail had arrived. The high profile retail stores, developed by Steve Jobs, the Apple retail team, designers Eight Inc., architects Bohlin Cywinski Jackson and structural engineers Eckerlsey O'Callaghan have become among the most recognized brand expressions in retail.

Economics of Apple Stores
Several publications and analysts predicted the failure of Apple Stores, based on sales made per square foot which was a standard metric in computer retail at the time. It was thought that because of the stores' diminutive size and non-aggressive sales team, Apple would succeed in presenting the Mac but fail in making a significant number of sales, despite the huge turnout for the Virginia store (7,700 in the first day purchases). However, Apple proved its critics wrong and by 2007 it ranked among the top retailers in the world. Apple opened its 200th store on October 26, 2007, in Gilbert, Arizona, 2,251 days after opening its Tysons Corner store. According to Fortune; "and not just the architecture. Saks, whose flagship store is down the street, generates sales of $362 per square foot a year. Best Buy stores turn $930 - tops for electronics retailers - while Tiffany & Co. takes in $2,666. Audrey Hepburn liked Tiffany's for breakfast, but at $4,032 per square foot, Apple is eating everyone's lunch". In 2011 Apple Stores in the United States had revenue of $473,000 for each employee. According to the research firm RetailSails, the Apple Store chain ranks first among U.S. retailers in terms of sales per unit area in 2011, with sales of US$3,085 per square feet, almost doubling Tiffany & Co., the second retailer on the list.

Apple has since re-established ties with major big box retailers like Best Buy, as these chains have considerably more geographical reach than the existing network of Apple Stores. The relationship with Best Buy calls for the company to send Apple Solutions Consultants (ASCs) to train Best Buy employees to be familiar with Apple's product lineup and how Macs work.

Apple Stores have considerably changed the landscape for consumer electronics retailers and influenced other technological companies to follow suit. According to The Globe and Mail, "Apple’s retail stores have taken traffic, control and profits away from Verizon as well as electronics retailers, such as Best Buy, that once looked at wireless phones as a lucrative profit source". The Microsoft Store is similar to Apple's retail stores, by not only having sales staff but also employing "Technical Advisors" (similar to Apple's "Geniuses") to assist customers with technical questions and issues, plus Microsoft also trains staff from third party retailers at their Retail Experience Center. There has been speculation that Nokia and Samsung have been considering their own chains of retail stores as well.

Expansion and changes
Originally, Apple Stores contained a dedicated point-of-sale (POS) station. However, in 2006, Apple began introducing a new store layout and design with surgical-grade stainless steel walls and backlit signage. The new store design replaced the dedicated point-of-sale station with the handheld EasyPay system. A dedicated point-of-sale station still exists in most of these stores to facilitate transactions not paid for by credit card. The Regent Street store has more point-of-sale terminals than any other store. Only flagship stores and a few older locations have a dedicated point of sale; all other stores have a POS behind the Genius Bar. Apple has recently changed their EasyPay systems to operate on iPod Touch instead of the previous Windows-based system. The iPods feature a custom housing, the Infinite Peripherals Linēa-Pro barcode scanner and card reader, to allow the same transactions on the iPod.

On May 22, 2011, Apple replaced their acrylic displays that had information about the product with interactive iPad 2 displays, which add more information about the product like information about the specifications, comparisons and extended warranties. This transition from paper to touch displays was dubbed "Apple Store 2.0" by online blogs such as Engadget and Gizmodo.

The successful experience that Apple had with its retail stores has been applied to Disney stores, since Jobs was elected to that company's board of directors in 2006.