“Those who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world can truly change the world.”
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “New Retail Business Review” (ID: xinlingshou1001), author Cheng Xiaoqiong.
Today is the 8th anniversary of Steve Jobs’ death.
On October 5, 2011, Steve Jobs’s dying, warned his successor Tim Cook: “When you are in trouble, never think: if it’s Jobs, he’ll How to do it?“
After 8 years, on September 12, Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., released a series of new products, including the iPhone 11, which broke the $1 trillion mark. This is the second time the market value of Cook has exceeded the trillion dollar mark since August 2018.
This meticulous and diligent supply chain management expert chosen by Jobs, although bringing Apple to the highest market value twice, still can’t escape the rigors of the media and consumers – lack of creativity, no longer able to create a Macintosh A bloody, cross-age product like the computer, iPhone, and iPad.
As if the idea of technology and marketing has consumed the expectations of Steve Jobs for a generation.
But fortunately, Cook did not continue to work hard on his own short board. He did not have the “realistic distortion field” like Jobs, persuading and persecuting with the magical charm and temperament of the magician. Even humiliating talented geniuses can achieve impossible possibilities.
He faithfully executed Jobs’s last words, made his own decisions, and chose to do more sophisticated brand management after Steve Jobs opened up, which is reflected in the global expansion strategy of Apple’s flagship store.
Before Jobs died in 2011, Apple had 326 retail stores worldwide, and there were 6 in China (2 in Beijing, 3 in Shanghai, and 1 in Hong Kong). Today, Apple operates 35 online stores and 506 retail stores on five continents. There are already 52 in China (including mainland China, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan).
Not considered a good Apple retail store
In the world of Jobs, there is a genius/idiot dichotomy, only two extremes, one is perfect, one is shit, garbage.
The pursuit of ultimate perfection, the idea comes from the words and deeds of his hands-on engineer, Paul Jobs, “”Even if it is invisible to others,Pursue the ultimate beauty“.
From product design, research and development to production, to marketing, Jobs is an out-and-out control freak and perfectionist. This led him to eventually make Apple’s products and systems an extremely closed ecology – because only the combination of hardware and software can achieve the ultimate beauty that he demanded.
When he and Apple’s co-founder, geek Wozniak led a group of computer geniuses to develop Apple II, Macintosh computers and successfully commercialized, Jobs is still thinking about how to get their products from The buying experience begins to reap the hearts of consumers.
Steve Jobs and Wozniak
In the mid-to-late 1990s, sales in the computer industry have shifted from local specialty stores to large chain stores and mass merchandisers. In these places, the clerk is concerned. The $50 sales commission “is not professional and does not care about Apple’s product knowledge and product uniqueness.
And Apple’s computer is more expensive because of its unique innovative features. Jobs doesn’t want the iMac to be placed next to Dell and Compaq. He is ruthlessly making price comparisons and accepting the indifference of salespeople who don’t know how to do it. He hopes that consumers will have a sense of sensation that is “infused” by the brand from the moment they see the product.
This means that Apple wants to open a brand-specific retail store and win with innovation.
The board does not agree.
They used Dell’s direct sales model of offline retail stores to question Steve Jobs, and also used the predicated pioneer, Gateway Power Gateway, to open a suburban retail store’s fiasco and the fading decline to stop Jobs’s crazy action. .
Steve Jobs has long been determined to open huge, trendy, cool retail stores in downtown shopping malls and expensive shopping malls. He believes that “ retail stores will be the most powerful entity expression of the brand“.
Steve Jobs received support from Apple’s board of directors, former tycoon GAP CEO Midler Drexler. He hired Ron Johnson, vice president of sales planning at Target, who went shopping in a traditional shopping mall and discussed shopping.The layout of the heart, the reasons for the success of the store.
Johnson described the feeling of Ralph Lauren’s first trip to the store at the intersection of Madison Avenue and 72nd Street in Manhattan to buy the POLO shirt for the first time in his youth. The wooden floor and the majestic storefront of the building exude an artistic atmosphere.
This brand and the physical store’s appearance in the artistic atmosphere is exactly what Jobs is addicted to.
Change store design to lifestyle
In the “Steve Jobs Biography” written by Walter Isaacson, the story of the first store design and decoration selection for Apple retail stores was recorded in detail.
In October 2000, about six months of store design and sales, everything will be done.
One day, Johnson woke up in the middle of the night and felt that he had made some fundamental mistakes in the store’s display: around Apple’s main product line, the store would be divided into specific areas. But at this time Jobs has begun to develop a new concept: make computers become the backbone of all your digital life.
Johnson believes that: The design inside the store should take into account what the customer wants to do. Consumers who want to watch movies can run iMovie software in front of Mac computers, and consumers who listen to songs can use the corresponding software to achieve.
Redesign and layout retail stores based on customer needs. Although this delayed the retail store’s debut time by four months, it really laid the brand road for Apple retail stores.
On May 19, 2001, the first Apple retail store opened in the corner of Tyson, a high-end shopping mall in Virginia. Bright white counters, light wood floors, and huge posters with Think different attract a huge stream of people.
Since then, glass, steel, wood, and stone have become the iconic design elements of Apple retail stores. Compared with the average of 250 passengers per week, the Apple retail space is bright and simple, and the location of the bustling location brings 20 times the average weekly passenger flow. On the day of the new product launch, it will also lead to a queue of nights.
Another feature of Apple’s retail store is Genius Bar. Jobs wants users to experience the “best service,” so the first five retail managers are sent to attend the Ritz-Carlton training. Coupled with proficient in Mac knowledge, genius has become a community carrier for bonding consumer and product technology gaps.
In July 2011, before the death of Jobs, the first batch of Apple retail stores opened for 10 years. There are already 326 Apple retail stores in the world, each with an average revenue of $34 million, making it the most affordable retail brand in the world.
The sales revenue of retail stores only accounts for 15% of the total revenue, but the contribution of retailing is far more than the profit. The retail brand building of individual consumers will undoubtedly make Apple a cool pioneer brand in the technology field. In-depth people’s hearts have indirectly improved the company’s overall business.
Luxury style Apple retail store
In 2014, Cook dug up CEO Angela Allenz from Burberry Burberry as senior vice president of retail. In April 2019, Alenz left.
58-year-old Arenz is a loyal guardian of the fashion industry. From 2006 to 2014, he served as CEO of Burberry, bringing it back to the status of luxury goods.
Angela Allenz
Alenz’s positioning for Apple’s retail stores is, “We need to find a special venue and make it look like a city square, like a gathering place.”
For example, in late January 2019, the outgoing Allenz was interviewed by Vogue Business and talked about the retail experience of the new millennium. The interview was held at the Carnegie Library Apple Retail Store in Washington.
As the first public library in Washington, DC, this 116-year-old building has a magnificent, fascinating marble façade, and Apple spent $30 million to transform it into a modern, stylish retail space.
As a senior vice president of Apple Retail for five years, Alenz worked closely with Apple’s chief designer, Jonny Ivey, to team up with Pritzker Prize winner, British architect Norman Foster and his leadership. The architectural firm Foster + Parters has opened a series of distinctive Apple flagship stores around the world, each of which combines with local culture to refresh the minimalist style of Apple design.
In France, the Apple Champs-Élysées on the Champs Elysées in Paris are hidden in an Ottoman apartment building, originally designed to commemorate the Brazilian aviation pioneer Dumont.
In Italy, Piazza del Liberty, in the heart of Milan, draws on the concept of an outdoor theater, where water spouts from the sides of a square glass box that is 8 meters high, forming a spectacular water wall. The entire store is located atIn the underground, the middle of this large glass fountain became the “secret passage” of the shop, and it was able to enter the store by walking down the stairs.
In Macau, the green bamboo forest was introduced, inspired by the simple geometry and the Chinese “paper lantern” shape, to create a “cubic illuminator” surrounded by bamboo forest.
Alenz believes that Apple’s retail store is the first space for face-to-face communication between 70,000 Apple employees and consumers around the world. For the new generation of network aborigines that Apple serves, Alenz believes that what they are most eager for is still interpersonal relationships and eye contact. So the offline community needs to be attractive to people. This includes historic spaces and cool designs, as well as richer content.
So during her tenure, Apple’s stores around the world promoted the “Today at Apple” project to reshape the retail experience.
“Today At Apple” is a new series of educational interactive courses covering topics such as photo and video, music, programming, art and design, led by professional Apple employees, and in the designated city, Apple will also invite world class Artists, photographers and musicians personally teach a variety of courses such as basic lectures, advanced lectures or expert lectures.
Today at Apple’s exclusive space
She cares about the impact of the retail industry on the company’s brand, not just sales data. In her view: retailers can’t just look at the profitability of an offline store, or the profitability of an app or online business. “You have to put it all together: a customer, a brand.” She mentioned that some Apple stores are not making money, but they will continue to do so.
This is the end-to-end controllable ultimate experience that Jobs has always emphasized. It is also the key to the retail revolution in the new retail era.
If Jobs lived for another 8 years, probably the most unbelievable is that in the arena of technology companies, another one that broke the market value of trillions is Microsoft.
In 2000, Bill Gates resigned as the CEO of Microsoft and gave way to Steve Ballmer, who is in charge of sales, to join the cause of public welfare. At this time, Steve Jobs began the expansion of Apple retail stores at the peak of product innovation, and the iPod will be launched soon.
In the interview with Walt Isaacson during his autobiography, “Steve Jobs Biography”, Steve Jobs directly commented that “Microsoft’s genes have never had humanistic spirit and artistic temperament.” He believes that Microsoft has lost its dominance.Bit. Bill Gates, “likes to say that he is a product, but he is not, he is a businessman. Winning business is more important than making great products.”
Steve Jobs and Gates
This era of ruthless contempt by Steve Jobs, under the efforts of Bill Gates’ successors, presents a different development curve – it is open and shared, rigorous, Efforts to achieve software compatibility under different hardware conditions are completely different from the extreme end-to-end closure of Apple products.
The two styles are very different, and they stand out in their respective fields and stand shoulder to shoulder in the tide of technological innovation.
Bill Gates did not hide his appreciation and disdain for Jobs, and his resistance to the “realistic distortion field.”
Despite the fact that Microsoft’s successor is “not a product engineer and designer”, emphasizing that big companies are beginning to value salespeople is destined to decline, Jobs’s departure from Gates’s debut is only enviable – After all, leaving the world at the age of 56, having to hand over to Cook, is the biggest regret that can not create more great possibilities.
This article pays tribute to Steve Jobs and his madness to this era. “Those who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world can truly change the world.”