Behind the Apple stores— Ron Johnson’s story of emerging as a retail sage!
Apple Inc., NASDAQ- AAPL, achieved widespread success in the retail domain when Ron Johnson, currently a business executive based in the USA, was in charge as the senior vice president of its retail operations. Evidently, his ten-year stint—from 2001 to 2011—had helped Apple’s consumer-friendly retail store strategy become a unique and successful one, serving as a role model, and turning it into the most money-making retail chain ever. To mention, very few of its competitors like Microsoft succeeded in brick-and-mortar stores after following the model, although to a lesser extent. Even in 2009, Microsoft adopted the copy-cat retail strategy when it opened new retail stores in order to connect consumers with the best of its products.
So, what actually brought success to Ron at Apple?
To answer the question, we need to examine some substantial facts, no less. Previously, most electronics companies were accustomed to selling their products alongside competing brands in generic stores. From time to time, some firms consolidated to form a ‘store within a store’ idea, which provided a solely distinguished section for each brand to sell its products. On the flip side, as well as being poorly knowledgeable and unsophisticated about Apple’s products, regular agents at its sections in a shop had very little incentive to promote its products to customers over those of other brands. Chiefly, these stores were treated as a place for maximising profits as well as upselling products. For Apple, or rather for Steve Jobs, however, things were going well but not cutting it to a great extent.
But they had Steve Jobs as their CEO, who had a clear, avant-garde vision about exactly what the Apple store would be. Then, to design and develop the vision with Steve Jobs, they hired Ron Johnson, a fifteen-year veteran in retail at Target. Before he joined Apple, it had already been recognized through and through for its efficacious, futuristic vibe; hence, his main task was particularly to extend that vibe.
Firstly, he opted to control the customer’s experience with a product from its introduction to the buying journey. He wanted to hire agents who were highly knowledgeable and sophisticated enough about Apple’s products, so that they could provide customers with the best and most useful services. First and foremost, discouraging the idea of upselling or cross-selling Apple’s products was one of the finest reasons behind this concept. As a result, the usual pushy salesmen were gradually kicked out. In time, those who came in were Apple Specialists who knew every bit of the products they were selling. At the outset, this idea was not that successful, though. However, he continued to strive for the perfect connotations of customer service.
Secondly, he launched the Genius Bar idea despite the reluctance of
Steve Jobs to be part of the idea. Obviously, people used to go to the
Apple store to buy products, but he wanted the customers to see that
there were many more things to observe like getting free technical
support for their products. It’s a whole new idea at that time. At
times, they shared community events and talks, free to attend, with
experts on how to maximise your experience with your products. In
essence, he wanted to hammer the idea home that he didn’t focus on
making profits but rather on retaining customers who were satisfied to
the extent that they would be encouraged to buy the upgraded products.
Finally, he revamped the store designs with a notion to reflect elegant, stylish, and minimalistic surroundings. At that time, not only were most customers unfamiliar with such store designs, but they had also never experienced the customer service that Apple had started providing to them. These two innovative aspects, in my opinion, were profound enough to enable Ron to be a distinguished, successful retailer.
Eventually, under Jobs’ marvellous tutelage and Ron’s outstanding hegemony, Apple’s retail stores were capable of attaining a record level of growth, exceeding a billion-dollar annual sales within two years, and superseding the previous record set by The Gap clothing retailer. Therefore, he became widely prominent as a retail sage of the century for his unprecedented exploits. However, after leaving Apple, within just seventeen months, he became the worst CEO ever possible. I will tell you about this another time.