Question on retail strategy
There’s no better place to discover, explore, and learn about our products than our retail stores. Our people are amazing. You walk in and immediately realize the store isn’t there for selling, but for service. The store helps you get more out of your products and acts as a gathering place. You might find a youth program with kids coming on an elementary school field trip. You might find a local musician performing. I’m not even sure “store” is the right word anymore. They are the face of Apple for almost all of our customers. People don’t think about the Cupertino headquarters…they think about the local Apple store. Last quarter, we welcomed 120 million people in our stores, and we only have a little over 400 of them.
So this is huge, in fact so huge that some of our stores aren’t big enough. But like cash, it’s a good problem to have. So this year we’re closing 20 stores and moving them to larger spaces. And opening 30 more stores, disproportionately outside of the U.S., including first store in Turkey.
I don’t think we would have been nearly as successful with iPad if it weren’t for our stores. This was something new that people didn’t know anything about, but the stores gave people the chance to come in and experience it.
We’re incredibly bullish on stores and going to continue to invest in them. Our people are fantastic, and there’s no place quite like it. I don’t have very many bad days, but if I ever feel that I’m dropping down from an excited level, I go and visit a store. It’s like a Prozac.
- Tim Cook (roughly transcribed, I’m sure)
(Source: macrumors.com)
