discovered was not perfect. He talked about doing it on
When the revised prototype was finally completed in January 2001, Jobs allowed the board to see it for the first time. He explained the theories behind the design by sketching on a whiteboard; then he loaded board members into a van for the two-mile trip. When they saw what Jobs and Johnson had built, they unanimously approved going ahead. It would, the board agreed, take the relationship between retailing and brand image to a new level. It would also ensure that consumers did not see Apple computers as merely a commodity product like Dell or Compaq.
Most outside experts disagreed. “Maybe it’s time Steve Jobs stopped thinking quite so differently,”
On May 19, 2001, the first Apple store opened in Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, with gleaming white counters, bleached wood floors, and a huge “Think Different” poster of John and Yoko in bed. The skeptics were wrong. Gateway stores had been averaging 250 visitors a week. By 2004 Apple stores were averaging 5,400 per week. That year the stores had $1.2 billion in revenue, setting a record in the retail industry for reaching the billion-dollar milestone. Sales in each store were tabulated every four minutes by Ellison’s software, giving instant information on how to integrate manufacturing, supply, and sales channels.
As the stores flourished, Jobs stayed involved in every aspect. Lee Clow recalled, “In one of our marketing meetings just as the stores were opening, Steve made us spend a half hour deciding what hue of gray the restroom signs should be.” The architectural firm of Bohlin Cywinski Jackson designed the signature stores, but Jobs made all of the major decisions.
Jobs particularly focused on the staircases, which echoed the one he had built at NeXT. When he visited a store as it was being constructed, he invariably suggested changes to the staircase. His name is listed as the lead inventor on two patent applications on the staircases, one for the see-through look that features all-glass treads and glass supports melded together with titanium, the other for the engineering system that uses a monolithic unit of glass containing multiple glass sheets laminated together for supporting loads.
In 1985, as he was being ousted from his first tour at Apple, he had visited Italy and been impressed by the gray stone of Florence’s sidewalks. In 2002, when he came to the conclusion that the light wood floors in the stores were beginning to look somewhat pedestrian—a concern that it’s hard to imagine bedeviling someone like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer—Jobs wanted to use that stone instead. Some of his colleagues pushed to replicate the color and texture using concrete, which would have been ten times cheaper, but Jobs insisted that it had to be authentic. The gray-blue Pietra Serena sandstone, which has a fine-grained texture, comes from a family-owned quarry, Il Casone, in Firenzuola outside of Florence. “We select only 3% of what comes out of the mountain, because it has to have the right shading and veining and purity,” said Johnson. “Steve felt very strongly that we had to get the color right and it had to be a material with high integrity.” So designers in Florence picked out just the right quarried stone, oversaw cutting it into the proper tiles, and made sure each tile was marked with a sticker to ensure that it was laid out next to its companion tiles. “Knowing that it’s the same stone that Florence uses for its sidewalks assures you that it can stand the test of time,” said Johnson.
Another notable feature of the stores was the Genius Bar. Johnson came up with the idea on a two-day retreat with his team. He had asked them all to describe the best service they’d ever enjoyed. Almost everyone mentioned some nice experience at a Four Seasons or Ritz-Carlton hotel. So Johnson sent his first five store managers through the Ritz-Carlton training program and came up with the idea of replicating something between a concierge desk and a bar. “What if we staffed the bar with the smartest Mac people,” he said to Jobs. “We could call it the Genius Bar.”
Jobs called the idea crazy. He even objected to the name. “You can’t call them geniuses,” he said. “They’re geeks. They don’t have the people skills to deliver on something called the genius bar.” Johnson thought he had lost, but the next day he ran into Apple’s general counsel, who said, “By the way, Steve just told me to trademark the name ‘genius bar.’”
Many of Jobs’s passions came together for Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue store, which opened in 2006: a cube, a signature staircase, glass, and making a maximum statement through minimalism. “It was really Steve’s store,” said Johnson. Open 24/7, it vindicated the strategy of finding signature high-traffic locations by attracting fifty thousand visitors a week during its first year. (Remember Gateway’s draw: 250 visitors a week.) “This store grosses more per square foot than any store in the world,” Jobs proudly noted in 2010. “It also grosses more in total—absolute dollars, not just per square foot—than any store in New York. That includes Saks and Bloomingdale’s.”
Jobs was able to drum up excitement for store openings with the same flair he used for product releases. People began to travel to store openings and spend the night outside so they could be among the first in. “My then 14-year-old son suggested my first overnighter at Palo Alto, and the experience turned into an interesting social event,” wrote Gary Allen, who started a website that caters to Apple store fans. “He and I have done several overnighters, including five in other countries, and have met so many great people.”
In July 2011, a decade after the first ones opened, there were 326 Apple stores. The biggest was in London’s Covent Garden, the tallest in Tokyo’s Ginza. The average annual revenue per store was $34 million, and the total net sales in fiscal 2010 were $9.8 billion. But the stores did even more. They directly accounted for only 15% of Apple’s revenue, but by creating buzz and brand awareness they indirectly helped boost everything the company did.
Even as he was fighting the effects of cancer in 2011, Jobs spent time envisioning future store projects, such as the one he wanted to build in New York City’s Grand Central Terminal. One afternoon he showed me a picture of the Fifth Avenue store and pointed to the eighteen pieces of glass on each side. “This was state of the art in glass technology at the time,” he said. “We had to build our own autoclaves to make the glass.” Then he pulled out a drawing in which the eighteen panes were replaced by four huge panes. That is what he wanted to do next, he said. Once again, it was a challenge at the intersection of aesthetics and technology. “If we wanted to do it with our current technology, we would have to make the cube a foot shorter,” he said. “And I didn’t want to do that. So we have to build some new autoclaves in China.”
Ron Johnson was not thrilled by the idea. He thought the eighteen panes actually looked better than four panes would. “The proportions we have today work magically with the colonnade of the GM Building,” he said. “It glitters like a jewel box. I think if we get the glass too transparent, it will almost go away to a fault.” He debated the point with Jobs, but to no avail. “When technology enables something new, he wants to take advantage of that,” said Johnson. “Plus, for Steve, less is always more, simpler is always better. Therefore, if you can build a glass box with fewer elements, it’s better, it’s simpler, and it’s at the forefront of technology. That’s where Steve likes to be, in both his products and his stores.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
