[S6E3] Shop Different with Ron Johnson

Thinking back to the design of the first store, there were some really remarkable concepts that you came up with, like the Genius Bar.

But I actually want to ask you about maybe some of the concepts that didn't work as well.

So when you think about the original store, what are the one or two concepts that thinking 25 years later were really not on a par and have kind of fizzled out over the life of Apple Retail?

Yeah, I'll give you an example.

The theater, right? Steve, you know, up until then, the only way he communicated with customers was at Macworlds.

You know, and the theaters were very popular.

People would love to sit in presentations and learn.

And it seemed obvious, you know, retail in the 90s, there was this big thing called retailtainment.

You know, Disney stores and others had done that.

And why not put a theater in the store? And so we put a theater in every store.

And it turns out they take a lot of work to keep them going.

Someone's got to be presenting.

You got to have high quality presenters in every store.

But then you got to get

customers to want

to come.

Well, customers didn't love to go to a store and they didn't go to stores to watch a 45 minute presentation.

They went to stores to try a product or to engage with a product, right? But then more importantly, in those presentations, you know, people who attend the presentation, they all have different skill levels.

And if you're kind of an advanced person, you're frustrated by these, you know, rookies asking all these questions.

So it turns out the theater never really worked.

They kind of did in a big flagship store like Soho where you could have, you know, really do it well.

But they didn't work in everyday stores.

And even Apple now is taking out these, what they called the town square where they had today at Apple, you know, where they had all these cubes now trying to reinvent the theater.

They brought it back.

They're taking it out again.