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Angela Ahrendts Departing Apple in April, Deirdre O'Brien to Oversee Retail and People
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What does merging online and physical retail mean? Online is online and retail is retail. They both sell the same items except one you pick up physically and one arrives to your home. The online portal has always been slick prior to Angela’s arrival.
The reservation system may have helped a little, however her roll out for apple's most significant new product in a long time, the watch, was a disaster. PRwise as well. The fact that she killed the long queues on product release days killed a huge mass of free money can’t buy PR for Apple. It even caused negative headlines that hurt share prices, with media claiming lines were now shorter due to people not buying the iPhone as much.
Apple has enough clout to secure the Hermes partnership without Angela, and really wasn’t a phenomenal game changing idea by any means.
And the fact that Apple retail is still strong is testament to the products not to Angela supposedly changing the result experience. You really are completely off the mark with your assessment.
This is another issue---the Genius Bar appointments. Horrendous. It should not take 72 hours to get a Genius Bar appointment---it's unacceptable.
Throw some of your billions toward hiring and placing more Geniuses, assuming manpower (er...."personpower") is the issue.
Here are the two reasons she was hired.
First, diversity. Go back to a year before she was hired there was a lot of outcry about the lack of minorities in Silicon Valley's C-Suite/upper management. White women, a recognized "minority", are the easiest and safest to choose when a company is trying to appear more "diverse".
Second, the iWatch was getting ready to launch. Apple was set to make the watch and phone into high-end, premium tech jewelry pieces. She was hired to provide that level of retail expertise.
It didn't work out the way they intended.
First, diversity. Go back to a year before she was hired there was a lot of outcry about the lack of minorities in Silicon Valley's C-Suite/upper management. White women, a recognized "minority", are the easiest and safest to choose when a company is trying to appear more "diverse".
Second, the iWatch was getting ready to launch. Apple was set to make the watch and phone into high-end, premium tech jewelry pieces. She was hired to provide that level of retail expertise.
It didn't work out the way they intended.
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Her vision of retail resulted in my worst shopping experience ever:
Went to the “new” SF store and was passed around to 7 different reps, with the 7th turning out to be the 1st one, who sent me off to rep#2 in the first place. All this, just for a pair of buds...which I grabbed out of #7’s hands and put back on the shelf and stormed out saying “I’ll just buy them online”.
Went to the “new” SF store and was passed around to 7 different reps, with the 7th turning out to be the 1st one, who sent me off to rep#2 in the first place. All this, just for a pair of buds...which I grabbed out of #7’s hands and put back on the shelf and stormed out saying “I’ll just buy them online”.
I’m not a fan of the toadstool chairs. They make me feel like I’m in Kindergarten. Was that her doing?
There is much that goes on behind the scenes with an online strategy. In general, Apple has done a better job of managing product distribution as they have expanded signficantly outside the US.
Regarding the Apple Watch, the long waits at the initial launch were because of production constraints, which she didn’t control. A lot of the initial moves such as the somewhat gimmicky “try-on” sessions were necessitated by the fact that Apple simply didn’t have the product to sell, but was under pressure to enter a new category. Better production in later generations fixed that.
There is no question Ahrendts’s connections got them the pop up shops and the Hermès relationship. Again, those were more about product awareness than actually sales.
Just quoting your posts as I think are the only interesting things I read here
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I can only speak for London but I wish I had more issues and bend gates to give me reasons to have to visit the Apple store, always feels like star treatment compared to most brick store experiences and I can only go after work hours or weekends so it's busy, they're in touristic areas though so they're always busy.
If some of the people writing here are approaching the store employees with the same arrogance that they type here then maybe you're not going to start on the right feet. Costumer service works both ways regardless of the industry, besides fellow macmoanners I don't know a single person who has had a bad experience in a store (and again London, everybody has an iPhone) people brag about the service they received, moan all you want, like it or not, Apple excels in customer service.
I personally have total respect for Angela, everyone is still trying to figure what to do with brick and mortar and Apple is years ahead. She paved way for Apple being able to move retail under a people leader, I doubt any other company could do this.
And to the people supporting the thought that someone from a different industry like fashion cannot work in tech is ridiculous and honestly just reveals how short sighted and disconnected from reality people can be
That is so incredibly wrong, and why so many tech people just don't get it. When you have a company full of tech-y people you need to hire a non-tech-y person to be able to relate to the customer. 95% of Apple's customers wouldn't be able to tell you the difference between a CPU and a hard drive if you asked them.
Is it possible that she felt the company and her job weren’t going anywhere under Cook?
Damn straight!
Just like that Angela Ahrendts is just too sexy for Apple.
To be honest I don’t think Apple courted her after the initial entrance too well. She’s truly made Apple stores into engagement locations and beautiful. Great woman’s touch was heavily needed and I say this in the upmost respect for her and woman as a whole. I just feel Apple board nor management celebrated her creativity nor let it grow enough!
Whenever she presented on stage although happily cheered, she seemed .... anxious or restricted.
She’s got class, flare and style that kills all other executives .... even Eddies flare for hot pink shirts LMAO!
Honestly, it seems to strike a chord that any woman at Apple close to having any influential presence of power in front of users seems to exit quickly: Boz was far too different hip-hop, true to get the crowd moving and never screwed up her presentation EVEN to lacklustre audience engagement when she trie FYI get the crowd to rap to sugar hill gangs classic.
There’s plenty of not nice things I can say about Angela, but the only one that fits is that her rethink of Apple stores are yet another reason why I am finally stepping away from
. I feel so unwelcome in Apple stores now and that’s been mounting since 2016.
that was jony ive
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Lol. Under cook’s direction they’ve gone from a minor player to a dominant industry force.Is it possible that she felt the company and her job weren’t going anywhere under Cook?
The iPhone—and all of the accessories and peripherals it spawned—ruined both the Apple Store and Apple culture.
Yet without the iPhone Apple would slowly be sliding into oblivion again...
She was brought in for Apple’s initial foray into fashion around the first Apple Watch. After that fizzled, there was no real reason to keep her around.
Nonsense. I'm forced to disagree with you in the strongest possible terms. First Cook, then Ive.
Seriously? You think that TC has done more to carry Apple forward than Steve Jobs?
What has Tim done from the ground up that has been wildly successful?
Apple Watch? I love mine, but it’s hardly ‘made’ the company.
Apple TV? LOL
Apple Car?
HomePod?
Perfecting Siri? (Every time I ask my wife, “Are you serious?” my phone chimes in, “I can help you with that.”
China was a bust until they lowered the price on the most recent phones. He’s paying France a half-Billion dollars in back taxes.
All the stuff that drives the company is still riding the coat tails of Steve.
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We need a diversity hire for all the emoji and animoji.
I want to be represented as an emoji / animoji as well.
Angela paved nothing. The Apple retail stories were already in great shape. There was nothing like it seen before. So much so that other companies took inspiration and started mimicking the Apple store style. This was all way before she arrived.
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No it wasn't. When I got my //e Apple was just one among a half-dozen companies such as Commodore and Tandy trying to establish themselves in the market. Actually, they were trying to establish the market of personal computers itself. Even after the Mac was launched there was no zeitgeist or general feeling that Apple was a fashion brand, even well into the 90s. Niche maybe, but not fashion. One can argue the introduction of the iMac changed that, but that's a far cry from "has always been a fashion company in a sense".
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What, make a stupid amount of money for doing as little as possible? Mission accomplished, I suppose!
Assuming the worst? What are you on about? Most people are simply happy she's gone! LOLLooks like once again, people here like to automatically assume the worst of whatever is happening at Apple.
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Reading between the lines of her statement and the new combined role, my speculation is that there was some friction between Deirdre's area and Angela's, especially since so many of Apple's people are retail employees. So I'm speculating that Tim decided to combine the two areas, with Deirdre being the choice and/or Angela not really wanting to get into the HR area.
Apple had enough stock to create the long queues on initial release, and therefore the media hype they used to be known for and that fans were excited about. The fact that there would be limited stock after initial release would help create even more anticipation and sales. Instead the whole idea they implemented killed a huge aspect of what apple was known for. What company generates queues of people on a launch day? None. Big misstep. And as for the pop up stores. They were boutique and maybe increased awareness amongst a niche subset but that’s not what Apple is about. Another complete misstep. And as stated Apple did not need her connections to create that. Yes she may have helped facilitate it indeed that’s why she was brought onboard. But they could easily have done it without her. So again I wonder what is left that she accomplished that warranted her huge income and title.
Regarding online strategy, Apple don’t make enough products for the online strategy to need much going on behind the scenes that was not already in place prior to her sign up.
Can’t shake the feeling that it’s like they’re doing me a favor when I get service at an Apple Store. They seem friendly enough, but the entire interaction seemed so .... scripted...1984-ish. IMHO
It’s obvious her shares finished vesting so she is done at Apple.
All for the money.
All for the money.