When Angela Ahrendts was head-hunted by Apple to head up its retail operations, she said she was given one constraint on what she could change.
She recounted the instruction in a new profile of her work …
The Buzzfeed profile describes Ahrendt’s vision for a new way of looking at the stores.
But it’s no puff-piece: it makes no bones about the reaction to one of her big ideas – to rebrand the stores as something else.
“This is our hardware,” she said, pointing to the Indianapolis store’s glass doors and indoor ficuses. ”Then you say, ‘What’s the software of the store? How do we turn it on?’ Because this unto itself is magnificent, but it’s not just what it is, it’s what it does,” referring to the new Today at Apple program, under which locations host events like photography workshops and coding classes.
It also has commentary from retail staff who are not persuaded that some of her ideas are realistic.
Another long-term retail employee spoke about corporate apparently being blind to short-staffing in the stores.
Additionally, Geniuses only have 10 minutes to diagnose every phone issue and 15 minutes for every Mac issue, something Rivera, the former Genius, said “is just not realistic.”
But it’s clear that Ahrendts was right about one thing: stores are not just somewhere people go to buy things.
One rebranding exercise that does appear to have succeeded is changing the name of Workshops to Today at Apple. The workshops were so much of a well-kept secret that many didn’t know they existed, and broadening their scope has also dramatically increased their visibility.
Check out the rest over at Buzzfeed.
