It’s not often that Apple invites journalists to its stores for a preview anymore, but today was a bit different. Apple not only unveiled its new San Francisco store, it also explained its new strategy for its major retail outlets.
As I sat listening to Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail and online stores, it became clear very quickly that Apple kept its attention to detail in the design of the location, but completely rethought how it functioned.
“Fifteen years ago today Apple opened its first two stores and we’re thrilled to mark the occasion with the opening of Apple Union Square in San Francisco,” said Ahrendts. “We are not just evolving our store design, but its purpose and greater role in the community as we educate and entertain visitors and serve our network of local entrepreneurs.”
Ahrendts said the company even thought about how sections of the Apple stores were named, like the Genius Bar. The word “bar” brings up thoughts of a busy, noisy space—not really what you’re looking for when trying to talk to an expert about your problems.
Apple renamed it the Genius Grove and added trees and seating, which gives it a more relaxed look and feel. It’s calming.
While Ahrendts talked about Jony Ive and some design elements of the store, like the 42 foot tall doors that open 40 feet wide, she focused most of her talk on the “purpose” of the store itself.
In all, Apple said they were unveiling five new features in the San Francisco Apple Store:
“The Avenue,” inspired by the window displays along a boulevard that dynamically change with the season. Avenue walls are interactive themed “windows” where Apple’s products and services come to life, from music, to creativity, apps, photography and more. New “Creative Pros,” Apple experts in creative arts, offer advice and expertise at each of the displays. Customers will also find “Only at Apple” products on the Avenue, a curated collection of third-party accessories.
“Genius Grove” invites customers to get support working side-by-side with Geniuses under the comfortable canopy of local trees in the heart of the store.
“The Forum” is a vibrant gathering place, centered around a 6K Video Wall. It is home to “Today at Apple,” which brings to the community the world’s most talented artists, photographers, musicians, gamers, developers and entrepreneurs to inspire and educate our customers to go further with the things they are passionate about. Today at Apple includes year-round programs for kids, new monthly events for teachers, sessions for current and aspiring developers, Creative Sessions in partnership with local experts in creative arts, Game Night with editors from Apple’s App Store and more. The Forum and Video Wall are a place of discovery, including events about the making of movies from iTunes, or exclusive premieres of new music and music videos from Apple Music.
“The Plaza” will be found only at Apple’s most significant stores, including Apple Union Square. It’s open to the public 24 hours a day, features public Wi-Fi and seating, and takes Today at Apple outside, with a regular weekend series of well known local acoustic performances such as Travis Hayes and global talents like Escondido, who will then give exclusive interviews about their craft in the Forum. The Plaza at Apple Union Square features a fountain by well-known San Francisco sculptor Ruth Asawa, originally commissioned in 1969, and a new work, “Love” by local artist Laura Kimpton, commissioned by Hyatt Hotels.
“The Boardroom” is an intimate space where the store’s Business Team offers hands-on advice and training to entrepreneurs, developers and other small and medium business customers.
By looking at the list, it’s easy to say that some of these features have been around for a while—you would be partially correct. The Genius Bar has been a staple of Apple stores for years, but yet, I feel like they are different.
Apple is becoming a larger part of the communities where they do business. Not just the tech community or for the people that are buying products, but the larger community.
It’s not just Apple, the gigantic company, it’s an individual store, with local people working there, local entrepreneurs presenting, local businesses learning, and local artists inspiring and educating.
The Apple store in San Francisco felt different. It felt good.
The new stores are heaven on Earth. I wanna live inside one. Fantastic job, Angela. Congrats!
I came here to mock “Genius Grove” but the more I think of it the nicer it sounds.
I’ll mock it. It sounds like a concept that comes out of California, with no consideration for weather in the rest of the world. Much less the sad mall locations of far too many Apple Stores. It sounds like a corporate out of touch with how over-busy the mall stores are, there is no way to fit a “grove” in a mall store, if you tried it certainly wouldn’t be any quieter than the bar they have now.
I know Apple Retail is focused on international expansion, especially China, but it feels at time the US stores are being left to run on autopilot. For instance, the Minneapolis market hasn’t added a new store in 6 years, think a moment how much Apple business has grown in 6 years. Guess how much the stores have changed? No more Genius Bars in six years to service all the new Apple Customers means even stupider bar noise. “Groves” won’t help.
Signing on to this. The only store in Seattle (one of the most tech-friendly and fastest growing cities in the country) has only one store in the city itself, and is a TINY mall-store location that will never get any of these amenities, which are clearly only targeted at massive flagship locations. There isn’t even room for a potted plant by the Genius… area. It’s always overstuffed with people.
THESE are the kinds of problems – not just in SEA – that Apple Retail should be solving. Not 24/7 Plazas and Forums and such that most stores won’t have space for.
Uh…. there are 4 stores in the Seattle area. Lynnwood, Bellevue, University Village, Southcenter. And of course, the Tacoma store.
I’d imagine that they’ll adapt the SF concepts to the various different stores. Is that so hard to figure out? Oh wait, I’m talking to someone who doesn’t even know how many stores are in his city.
That’s why I said Seattle “has only one store in the city itself”.
And the U Village store is TINY? Please. Plus, the city limits are rather small. Anyone who lives here accounts for the surrounding area when talking about shopping or living.
OK, now you’re just trolling. It’s one of the smaller (if not the smallest) Apple Stores in the region, and substantially smaller than any of the stores in NYC, Chicago, SF, LA, London, Paris… etc.
hahahah… right, I’m trolling. Is it smaller than showcase stores like NYC, SF etc? yes. Is it tiny? Don’t be ridiculous. And way to ignore that they’ll be redoing stores and adapting the concepts shown here. It’s blatantly obvious to anyone who thinks about it that the concepts in SF will HAVE to be adapted to a variety of store configurations. But you just wanted to whine, didn’t you?
well, I expect that that will change in due time in Seattle… Here in Montreal, we have two flagship stores. So the new features presented today are bound to be years away for us.
So another poster and I went down a bit of a rathole but I would like to hear about whether Angela addressed how these concepts will be applied to other, non-showcase stores. Jim?
I think I’ll mock it, too, because nobody sane calls it an Apple Grove.
If only Apple opened a store in New Zealand I would be happy.
You people are so ready to jump down the throat of anything new and find fault with it. But then if Apple just kept making the same old stores, THAT would be just more “lack of innovation.” Get over yourselves.
I see this new SF store as a good opportunity for Apple to truly innovate—NOT to entertain or pander to you bozos, but to actually try these new concepts, testing them in the real-world environment of an actual store. No, some or most new features wouldn’t work in a lot of Apple stores, but there will be most likely a substantial amount of trickle-down reaching many stores in various ways.
In the mean time, Apple has a great new flagship store in San Francisco, comparable in significance to its Fifth Avenue store, which is a multi-faceted attraction to not only Apple customers but to so many New Yorkers and countless visitors and tourists. The public relations, promotion, and advertising benefits are huge.
I like the new emphasis on a broader community focus. I recall our Tampa Apple store (#6 or maybe #9) used to invite local experts to give presentations at the store. With the much larger display and perhaps better seating and more space, this type of event could be more effective.
I’d really love to see Angela’s and Sir Jony’s new creations up close. So there you go: this new flagship store is already doing its job! 😉
No, it won’t. They’ll adjust and adapt but the full feature set will only be available in the “big” stores.
I’ll say the same for Thailand! I love how people complain that there’s only one store in their city, although there are three more in the area – when Thailand’s nearest Apple Store is in Hong Kong.
Yeah, I just don’t understand the obsession with bringing other problems in and judging a move by something unrelated in history. You can’t solve everything at once. Is this better that what came before? Yes? Awesome.
what hater nonsense. this is a big concept store. it’s OK for it to have features not found in smaller mall stores. deal with it.
your post is another example of techies living inside sheltered bubbles, whereby they believe everyone has the same needs and conditions as they do. empathy is your challenge.
btw — tons of awesome stuff has come out of California and is distributed to the world, who eats it up. including you. unless you dont own any hollywood entertainment products?
well said. people like the aptly named user “Curmudgeon” are techie-haters, they have a compulsive need to shit on everything because its how they deal with their own struggles and regain control over the chaos. its pure psychology, I’m afraid.
for those who maintain their ability to empathize with others, we can see this for what it is — a fresh new set of ideas being deployed. more power to ’em.
Then call it a concept store, don’t call it the next generation of Apple Stores. I’ll judge by what it is promoted as, call it a concept for flagships, cool, it’s nifty.
Having worked in Apple Stores for 9 years, HQ has a California bubble mindset. They come in to Midwest stores in winter and berate the visuals and cleaning staff because salt is caked all over the nice Italian store floors Steve personally selected. No shit, every day salty slush comes in on customers boots and cleaning staff works their asses off every night washing it off.
Apple is huge with Accessbility, but in Apple Retail they give elderly wooden stools to sit on that send them to the chiropractor and workshops are on tables so tall the wheelchair bound are nearly under the table.
Ironically, empathy is possibly your challenge.
All you negative ninnies can just go sulk in a corner. My store here in Oklahoma City is getting a remake, and while it likely won’t be seeing the full treatment the flagship stores get, it’s going to be a nice change and should invigorate the hundreds of people that go in there every day. (Have I spoken before about how the store is super crowded while the Microsoft store next to it has only employees standing around? Oh, yes, I have.)
Sad malls? Well, the mall our Apple Store is in is anything but sad — as opposed to the vacant and deteriorating strip malls dotting the Oklahoma City landscape while developers frantically build more strip malls. So, take your “sad malls” and go sulk again.
I’m glad Apple has decided to redo our store here in OKC. They could easily have just told us to stuff it considering the state of everything here. I suppose that even in our depressed circumstances here, the Apple Store must be doing fairly well, and that gives me hope beyond the government here putting us in a $1.3 Billion shortfall.
And I’m not sure why anyone would think it’d be any different? That’s been the case for retail ever since Sears put up gigantic department stores and then set small catalog stores in various far flung areas. And you couldn’t even tear out the catalog pages to use for toilet paper in your outhouse.
“I’m not sure why anyone would think it’d be any different. ” Because people tend to not think about the big picture, only their own (unenlightened and unexamined) self interest…
Ah. Special Snowflake Syndrome. 🙂
Looks nice.
I visit an Apple store of one kind or another roughly once a year—at most—generally to see new hardware and ask questions about it. I expect them to be crowded, whether they’re a shoebox mall store or the Grand Central Terminal branch. What I need from these stores is knowledgeable staff who are being treated with respect by their local management.
What I’ve come to expect is courteous, egalitarian help, despite the fact that I’m usually far less well-groomed than most of the regular clientele in, say, NYC’s Meatpacking District. Happily, I have yet to be disappointed.
I do like the idea of returning public events of one kind or another to flagship stores; I was under the impression those had been phased out.
Everything else is almost literally window dressing for me. Fun to look at, but secondary to the reasons I’m in the store.
“I do like the idea of returning public events of one kind or another to flagship stores; I was under the impression those had been phased out.”
They were an integral part of the original stores because Apple thought they would be needed to bring in customers. Once they found out people were packing the stores regardless of the theatres, they phased them out in favour of more retail space.
A friend of mine ran those events at the NYC SoHo store for years. He chose to quit rather than take a floorwalker job when they ended.
more nonsense. its not even a concept store — its the new format for their big flagships. thats a type. a type needed replace all previous types.
would love to see your evidence of old ladies being sent to chiropractors (which are bullshit anyway)…otherwise you’re just sour graping your personal grievances.
empathy is not my challenge. come up with your own stuff, please.
You’re so right, I needed to require them to present their medical bills or else I unsympathetically dismissed it.
You’re inferring what this review didn’t make plain, that this is for flagship stores. Flagship is a fuzzy word in Apple retail because markets have their own flagships which may or may not be Fifth Avenue-level “company flagship”. Most certainly it is. I bet it is, but unless said otherwise it is obvious there are things revealed in the review that likely will filter down to every store. Which those are isn’t said. So get to infer too until clarified.
California mindset isn’t necessarily always bad, I didn’t say so. But it is its own sheltered thinking that can lead them astray of how new ideas fit other geographies.
ok so you have no facts to back up your “APPLE STORES HURT OLD LADIES!!” claim. got it — we can drop that point now.
next you’re using some mental gymnastics to say you didn’t understand this wasnt going to get crammed into your mall store. got that too.
any more personal grievances you want to air under the guise of apple not knowing what theyre doing? despite, you know, being among the most profitable retailer per square foot in the country, and all (if not the highest)…. do tell us, dear sir!
Well, we’ll see how it goes. Back in the 70s-80s when I shopped and worked in downtown Chicago Burberry’s was an excellent clothing store filled brimful with high-quality clothing in the English style, primarily wool. Somewhat expensive but given its quality and durability not excessively so.
Last time I stopped in a Burberry’s, then under the excellent leadership of Angela Ahrendts, it consisted of 10 chrome racks each with 1 or 2 styles. Such as a not-really-great quality suit of indeterminate style for $2200. And salespeople who were really great at operating their iPad POS but didn’t know anything about how said item could be tailored.
Burberry’s was making a ton of money at that time, of course, so presumably there were enough people who find that sort of thing, with enough money, to make it work. Not sure a similar strategy will work for Apple though.