Angela Ahrendts' Makeover of Apple Retail Outlined in New Profile

[canonical]

Such an awesome story. Wow! I must read it again. Riveting stuff. Employee benefits improved under her! Wow.

 

[Rick2030]

Ahrendts has tweaked parts of Apple's retail "software" by changing employee t-shirts to a softer material, and removing lanyards so employees "make a human connection"

Wow what a genius. All I see at my local apple store is a load of boxes randomly shoved at one end that leave me desperately wanting to tidy up!
[doublepost=1509045054][/doublepost].........And what's with the Robert De Niro face in the first pic?

 

[hexcalibur]

"Ahrendts has tweaked parts of Apple's retail "software" by changing employee t-shirts to a softer material, and removing lanyards so employees "make a human connection" with customers."

Wow. Worth every penny of the millions she is compensated.

Who else could come up with such brilliance?

She's head of Apple Retail. Apple stores are the most profitable retail spaces IN THE WORLD. But that's not enough for you. Nothing ever is.

https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/29/apple-top-retailer-per-square-foot/

 

[Larry-K]

She's head of Apple Retail. Apple stores are the most profitable retail spaces IN THE WORLD. But that's not enough for you. Nothing ever is.

https://9to5mac.com/2017/07/29/apple-top-retailer-per-square-foot/

Hey, you're right, It's all Angela.

There's no way they could possibly sell that Apple Junk with lanyards and without softer fabrics.

 

[djnigelchung]

I think she's doing a decent job. I haven't noticed many changes, either positive or negative, at my local stores.

how can you say she's doing a decent job if you haven't noticed any change? (legit question, not being a smartass)

 

[old-wiz]

But it is true. The media IS inherently untrustworthy.

you are absolutely correct - the media presents "news" from whatever angle that corporate policy tells them to. To find the "trustworthy" news you have to read several outlets and try to come up with a picture from that.

 

[Cmd-Z]

To find the "trustworthy" news you have to read several outlets and try to come up with a picture from that.

In theory, yes. But people tend to believe what they want to believe and will naturally gravitate to sources that simply justify their beliefs. Critical thinking is not so common, most tend to want "news" spoon-fed to them.

So where does that leave us? Maybe we should turn off the goddam news, be respectful of people's differences in our daily activities, and hope for the best. /s

 

[unobtainium]

how can you say she's doing a decent job if you haven't noticed any change? (legit question, not being a smartass)

The whole retail operation doesn’t run itself. Seems to me she’s keeping the ship afloat just fine.

 

[Tech198]

Never seen a scared table before, and never want to.

 

[MartyvH]

I wish she'd change up her smile once in awhile, that smug looking smirk is annoying.

It looks non-committal.

 

[shadowmatt]

Angela wants people hanging out at the "Town Halls". getting you out of a queue is a good thing. It was extremely useful for me when I had to go to the Apple store by my Equinox Sport gym because my watch face came off. I hate when Apple keeps me waiting in a queue that isn't related to a new product launch.

eh? The old way was to book an appointment online / over the phone or in the store. Then you turned up for the appointment and were seen.

Now you have to queue at the front of the store, to see someone to schedule you for sometime that day, if you are lucky. You then get a txt telling you to return to the store to be seen. So there are still queues, just without the customer service at the end.

The worst case scenario, as happened to me, was I was told no one could see me that day as I was about 10th in the queue.

If they wanted people to be able to just walk in and see someone then they should have extra staff and assign 20% of them to these customers.

After I complained the manager called me and told me the above, that she took it from a working system to a joke.

 

[AdonisSMU]

eh? The old way was to book an appointment online / over the phone or in the store. Then you turned up for the appointment and were seen.

Now you have to queue at the front of the store, to see someone to schedule you for sometime that day, if you are lucky. You then get a txt telling you to return to the store to be seen. So there are still queues, just without the customer service at the end.

The worst case scenario, as happened to me, was I was told no one could see me that day as I was about 10th in the queue.

If they wanted people to be able to just walk in and see someone then they should have extra staff and assign 20% of them to these customers.

After I complained the manager called me and told me the above, that she took it from a working system to a joke.

You can still set an appointment via the website(granted that screen is difficult to find) or the app(easy to use).

 

[Abazigal]

By that definition she is doing a mediocre job. Any effort would result in some change. A good effort would result in positive change. If your Apple Store experience isn't noticeably better now than it was before she was hired then she isn't doing her job.

Her strength has always been in inspiring and motivating people.

http://fortune.com/2015/09/10/angela-ahrendts-apple/

I think she was brought into Apple to revitalize the Apple retail culture and integrate Apple's online and retail operations. Her job would be mainly to fix employee morale, so if you haven't seen anything different, that's a good thing, because it means that morale hasn't gotten worse. And there was a time before her hiring when morale at the Apple Stores was nosediving.

She says she told Cook, “ ‘Don’t believe everything you read. I’m not a techie.’ And he looks at me, and he goes, ‘I think we have enough techies here.’ And I said, ‘But you don’t understand. I’m not even really a great retailer. I hired great retailers.’ And he said, ‘Well, last time I looked we were one of the highest-productivity-per-square-foot stores of any company on the planet. So I think we have a lot of those too.’ ”

Part of Ahrendts’s initial strategy for fitting in at Apple was to stay under the radar (the company agreed to participate for this article only when it became clear that Fortunewas writing it regardless of whether she consented to be interviewed). As a result, few outsiders have a handle on what, exactly, Ahrendt has been doing, apart from small tweaks like new shirts for the sales staff (they can choose between T-shirts and polos), moving iPods to the back of stores, and deciding to no longer use the iPad to show prices on display tables. Says Marc Heller, who runs consultancy RetailSails: “My struggle with understanding what she does is I don’t know where her imprint is, other than the obvious.”

If anybody wants to criticise Angela further, I suggest you give the above article a good read first, because it does go into detail her roles and responsibilities. And she hasn't been idle.

 

[britboyj]

Was that the celebratory thing they handed out when they built the NYC Apple store years ago?

No, every employee gets a signed certificate at 5 years (then 10 years) signed by the CEO. Steve signed them as long as he could.