Apple told its staff never to hurry a customer. It assumed four or five
visits before anyone bought a Mac.
Ron Johnson built the Apple Store as Apple's SVP of Retail and ran it for a
decade. Before that he was the merchant behind Target's design turn — the
Michael Graves collection and everything that followed. He's the author of
Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple's Genius.
Steve Jobs came back to Apple in 1997 and concluded that after 25 years of
losing market share, the only thing they hadn't tried was their own stores.
The Mac was all about the magic of the operating system and the software —
and that magic, Johnson says, is something you can't market. People had to
put their hands on it.
Jobs is in this one as a manager, not a myth. Johnson turns up to a Monday
executive meeting having opened Apple's third store over the weekend, and
Jobs says: "You haven't sold a computer in the state of Texas. What are you
doing here?" He also remembers the head of marketing whose first act was
repainting the design studio, and who lasted exactly one week.
The back half is the case against "retail is dead" — new brands racing for
physical space, and why he thinks the question is already settled. Then a
walk through Target's home aisles comparing today's assortment to the one he
put there thirty years ago, and the one decision he says he'd have vetoed if
he'd been running the company.
Jobs comes back at 42:00, for the best piece of business advice Johnson ever
got.
"In the technology world, people tend to be living in their heads… In my
world, you're living in your heart. That's what a retailer does."
— Ron Johnson
Timestamps:
00:00 Tech Meets Heart
00:55 Welcome to the Show
03:00 Designing With Steve
05:52 Why Apple Needed Stores
11:40 Picking Prime Locations
15:57 Inside the Store Layout
19:12 Hiring for Hospitality
22:04 Target vs Walmart Lessons
23:45 Tesla Copies the Playbook
24:45 Jobs Gets Direct
26:50 Leading With Standards
27:46 Delegating To A Players
29:56 Retail Is Not Dead
32:35 Experience Beats Convenience
34:16 Tired Retail Dies Off
35:58 Bad Retail Decisions
39:07 Target Lost Its Feel
40:58 Stick To Store DNA
41:45 Dont Be In A Hurry
43:47 AI Race And Winners
45:32 Closing And Book Plug
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