Apple's Retail Plans

[MacRumors]

ThinkSecret reports on an internal presentation from an Apple Store meeting from June 2003.

ThinkSecret's notes from the meeting detail Apple's plan to continue their retail expansion, expand their retail staff, and increase sales to small business customers.

Part of the purpose of this aggresive growth is to increase marketshare.

Apple's opened their retail stores in late 2001 with the slogan "5 down. 95 to go." -- referring to marketshare percentage.

 

[sososowhat]

WAS 5 down, 95 to go in 2001

But market share slipped since...now 3 down, 97 to go.

G5, you're arriving just in time!

 

[Mudbug]

well, it shoulda been a little less than 3 down, a little more than 97 to go, but who's counting.

 

[arn]

Re: WAS 5 down, 95 to go in 2001

Originally posted by sososowhat
But market share slipped since...now 3 down, 97 to go.

G5, you're arriving just in time!

I don't think the numbers have changed significantly since they started.

Some said 3%, some said 5%. Obviously, Apple choose the 5% to market.

arn

 

[iJon]

this is great news. there are many things apple should consider to improve the stores. many of the people know macs and apple with a passion, but really dont know how to relate to the customer or just plain sell. also apple should always make sure they have a video freak, and audio freak, and a design freak to accompany any questions a person may ask because all 3 of those fields contain buyers willing to spend money on high end equipment and high end software. also something i would recommend is to have every salesman to ask for names and phone numbers to customers who have not decided to purchase yet. you would be surprised how many more sales these people can get if they just let the customer know that you will call them if new products are introduced. you call them, tell them, they come down and you look further into the the product and since they are already set to purchase something from you, especially if this is their second time in the store and they were interested in something the first time.

iJon

 

[MhzDoesMatter]

Went to an Apple store for the first time today (Boca Mall). They really are the best marketing strategy Apple has going right now. With the amount of impulsive foot traffic I saw today, no wonder public awareness of Apple and it's products are growing. Thing is, and I can only speak of the one I've seen, The Boca mall is a very uppity mall with most of the stores being Designer boutiques and the Apple store seems designed to fit right in.

Apple has always been a distinctive platform but are they now trying to become a distinctive brand, like a designer computer? They've always had an relatively exclusive market and in some instances seemed to directly position themselves as distinguishing items. And while they do have products for anyone and in general, target marketing to every one, is Apple really trying to become the Designer brands of Computers?

My sister, who's not a fanatic, but a fan, said today that the reasons regular people (as opposed to people like me and worse in her opinion) buy Apple for the same reason they'd buy a tailored designer suit. They know it's marked up far beyond a store brand, but they also know that the quality is great, the workmanship is incredible, the fit is perfect, and that anyone who matters would know the difference.

I was speechless.

-Hertz

I mean, me? Speechless?

 

[robbieduncan]

It all sounds good bar one thing. The only "international" stores talked about were in Japan. We want Apple Stores in Europe! Mac market share here is pretty poor, partly because there are not many places offering good, clear Mac oriented sales and advice.

 

[mvc]

Originally posted by MhzDoesMatter
…they also know that the quality is great, the workmanship is incredible, the fit is perfect, and that anyone who matters would know the difference.

That's truly beautiful! Gives me a nice warm smug glow of superiority, a pleasant counterbalance to that 3% and falling statistic further up the thread.

 

[vollspacken]

I hope Apple doesn't overstretch the store chain... there's a bad example of a computer company that did the same thing (radical expansion) a couple of years ago in Germany: ESCOM, and they killed themselfs by doing so (o.k., maybe the Commodore Amiga deal was part of the problem too.., but you get the idea)

don't let the store idea get to big...

vSpacken

 

[iGav]

They need to open one in London smartish!!

Smack in the middle of Oxford St between Tottenham Court Road and Picadilly Circus, with a big glowing Apple on the front...

Makes perfect sense, Oxford St = Europe's busiest street, and it's between Soho and Noho that must have the largest installed Mac user-base of any city in any country...

 

[centauratlas]

If you have an NFL team you should have an Apple Store...

One would think that if your city is big enough to have an NFL team you'd have an Apple Store. Which NFL cities don't have Apple Stores?

* Jacksonville, FL

other's?

 

[QuiteSure]

To reach small business Apple must have a headless emac for under $800. Until that happens, Apple cannot compete with a $499 Dell, like the one I just bought for my secretary. We had the 17" monitor from her old 6100 and I didn't want to get rid of it for an emac and I didn't want to spend $1200 for a tower. I'll never replace my main box with anything other than a mac, but for my secretary, the Dell was good enough.

Apple can't afford for me to think THAT different.

 

[legion]

... but not expansion teams (just joking, well, kind of...)


The deal with retail stores, besides worrying about market saturation and targeting customer types is that you have to deal with real estate companies and mall management. There's all kinds of wheeling and dealing that goes on to get pieces of property and then there's no guarantee that you'll get the one property before another (there could be issues with new malls or prior tenants, etc..)

For instance, if you want to move into a Simon Mall (largest private owner of retail property in America) say in Los Angeles, you may have to negotiate opening in one of their malls in ShortHills,NJ and one in Aventura, FL. Then there's no guarantee that you'll even get to move in and open the LA property before the Short Hills property (even though that's the one you really want), however Simon Malls needs to fill out and encourage other companies into their Short Hills complex and are looking to use your brand to hook others. It goes on and on like this and you end up looking at 60 properties to open up only 3 or 4 stores (and maybe forced to deal with market saturation and just hope you can back out of the deal later based on contracted per sq ft amounts not being met in a year)

International stores are harder because of distribution channels and understanding the local markets. Even if Apple is available in Europe, their infrastructure may not be able to meet the demands for a retail store (and by the way, opening a single retail store internationally is much harder than opening five.) Accounting alone can require a much larger overhead than a company will see in return for dealing with each country's policies and amazingly enough, in this day and age, timezones can be a big problem. It goes on and on like that (until you are about to tear your hair out)....

To give you an idea in difficulties, for one company, it took me 3 years to get a single store open in Japan (in the end I ended up negotiating the opening of 3 stores to make it happen), 5 years to get a store in London (though stores in Italy, Paris, and the Netherlands were easy to set up after London in 2 years following) and during that time, 30+ retail stores were being set up in the US per year.

I completely understand Apple's growing pains in the Retail market, though I can see how to consumers it looks like a poor strategy.

 

[zed]

Re: If you have an NFL team you should have an Apple Store...

Originally posted by centauratlas
One would think that if your city is big enough to have an NFL team you'd have an Apple Store. Which NFL cities don't have Apple Stores?

* Jacksonville, FL

other's?

New Orleans. I think they should change the style up a bit for a New Orleans store. They could put it on Royal street in the French Quarter... and give it a more rustic appearance.

btw, that will never happen.

 

[robbieduncan]

Originally posted by legion

International stores are harder because of distribution channels and understanding the local markets. Even if Apple is available in Europe, their infrastructure may not be able to meet the demands for a retail store (and by the way, opening a single retail store internationally is much harder than opening five.) Accounting alone can require a much larger overhead than a company will see in return for dealing with each country's policies and amazingly enough, in this day and age, timezones can be a big problem. It goes on and on like that (until you are about to tear your hair out)....

Whilst I agree with everything quoted above I would like to point out that Apple already has a major on-line retailing presence in Europe with warehousing and so on in Ireland so opening stores in the UK should not be an issue. They must have accounting and some of the requried logistics in place.

 

[Sonofhaig]

Re: Re: WAS 5 down, 95 to go in 2001

Originally posted by arn
I don't think the numbers have changed significantly since they started.

Some said 3%, some said 5%. Obviously, Apple choose the 5% to market.

arn

I've seen some PC lovers saying its 2.5%
What ever it is now. We still win in the end.

 

[c2kvette]

Well, Charlotte has the Carolina Panthers - but no Apple Store.
Although, I have confirmation that one is coming this fall!!

Which brings me to another topic - I want to work there part time, and if the store is to open this fall when will they start hiring???

 

[Squire]

Agree With Your Sis

Originally posted by MhzDoesMatter
My sister, who's not a fanatic, but a fan, said today that the reasons regular people (as opposed to people like me and worse in her opinion) buy Apple for the same reason they'd buy a tailored designer suit. They know it's marked up far beyond a store brand, but they also know that the quality is great, the workmanship is incredible, the fit is perfect, and that anyone who matters would know the difference.

I totally agree. And for the same reason, I think a lot of people (shareholders excluded) would NOT want to see Apple's market share go sky high. I mean, if you have an Armani suit (for lack of a better example) and then, suddenly, everybody starts wearing Armani, your suit doesn't seem like the cat's meow anymore. My point is this: I think a lot of Mac users really love the exclusivity of owning a Mac. Sure, a lot of perks would come with a huge increase in market share, but some of the mystique would be lost.

Squire

 

[KCK]

Re: If you have an NFL team you should have an Apple Store...

Originally posted by centauratlas
One would think that if your city is big enough to have an NFL team you'd have an Apple Store. Which NFL cities don't have Apple Stores?

* Jacksonville, FL

other's?

Oakland CA doesn't have an Apple store. Then again there are 5 stores within a 45 min drive of Oakland. Two of these stores are within a 20 minute drive and we are still waiting for the San Francisco store to open.

 

[jaykk]

SteelCity

I cant belive they are not going to open a store anytime soon in Pittsburgh, PA.(Basee on the job postings on apple). I cant belive they are not opening a store in this city especially since the Mac os X connection with CMU. I heard Avi graduated from CMU and part of the team who created mach kernal.

 

[praetorian_x]

If apple is serious about increasing market share, they must compete on price. End of story. Moores law has finally reached its logical conclusion: computing power has become cheap to the point of inexpensive ubiquity. Yes, there will be high-end stuff, but the majority of users will be satisfied using inexpensive 1 ghz class processors with decent system bandwidth.

The iBook shows that apple, when it chooses to do so, can compete in this space well. Lets hope (for the sake of our beloved powermacs and powerbooks), that they can do something similar (without requiring users to buy a monitor) in the desktop space.

(I actually think, once the g5 is released, they will have an opprotunity to create a headless imac that won't compete directly with the powermac, thus making it much more probable.)

Cheers,
prat

 

[PR Wiley]

Apple Store in Short Hills Mall NJ

I was in the Short Hills Mall this last Saturday buying an iMac for my 71 year-old mother in law who I switched from a PC. The Short Hills Mall is a very upscale place -- complete with valet parking for some stores.

The store was doing a land-office business and sold 5-6 machines in the 30 minutes I was in the store waiting to be waited on. They did not have enough staff to to serve all the interested customers.

My mother-in-law loves her iMac. First reaction was "it's pretty" and that sums up a lot of the Apple marketing strategy. She can now browse the Web and get email and her word processing far more transparently that she had been able to do on her old Windows box . . . and for that she did not care too much about paying a little more.

 

[balconycollapse]

Howdy! My first post woo! It would be interesting to have access to to the demographics information of apple computer. Wonder if it would surprise me or just be "expected". I think you guys/gals are making a good point on apple positioning themselves as a "benz" or mercedes of computing. I also like the fact that i see Powerbooks and Imacs showing up in all kinds of movies from James Bond to god knows what. Another thing i have noticed is an acceptance of Apple computers in urban/hip hop culture (see making the band with pdiddy on mtv). The rest of america seems to follow the trends that come out of this culture be it vintage jerseys or teched outvehicles. Notice the success Coke (sprite) and Burger King have had with this demographic. I think this is a wonderful thing, gives apple more of a "grassroots" users base (god i hate that term). someone mentioned in another thread awhile back about windows users disdain for gates empire. macheads are dedicated followers and it sure isn't because of the cool to be obscure mystique. I loved that quote about "craftsmanship" . One thought...i've never been in a mac retail store...hoping KC will get one someday. Do they pressure? Nag? You know what i mean go up to everyperson that walks in and do a sales pitch. I have worked alot in retail and am weary of this technique. I was forced to do it at Pier One Imports and it really soured alot of customers experience. Oh well...enough of my babbling.

 

[Toppa G's]

Green Bay has no Apple Store

There's no store in Green Bay, but then again, it's one of the smallest cities to host an NFL team. And Milwaukee (Wauwatosa's Mayfair Mall has one) is 2-2.5 hours from there.

Visited the North Michigan Aveue flagship store in Chicago...now that is a sweet Apple Store. I think it's a good idea to have a few big stores like that one scattered about, and then have the smaller, in-mall ones on a wider scale.

 

[cubist]

Re: Agree With Your Sis

Originally posted by Squire
... I mean, if you have an Armani suit (for lack of a better example) and then, suddenly, everybody starts wearing Armani, your suit doesn't seem like the cat's meow anymore. My point is this: I think a lot of Mac users really love the exclusivity of owning a Mac. ...

That's not an insoluble problem; you just sub-brand (as Toyota with Lexus, e.g.). If Apple should achieve 30% market share, for example, they could revive the NeXT brand.