Ron Johnson, the executive who helped create Apple Stores with Steve Jobs, says that the company's Genius Bars were not a success initially and the company even used free bottles of Evian to get customers to visit. "No one came to the Genius Bar during the first years," Johnson, now the CEO of J.C. Penney, wrote in a Harvard Business Review blog post on Monday. "We even had Evian water in refrigerators for customers to try to get them to sit down and spend time at the bar." Johnson goes on to say that Apple stuck with the Genius Bars anyway because "we knew that face-to-face support was the very best way to help customers." Within three years, Genius Bars were so popular that Apple had to set up a reservation system.
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Elsewhere in the post, Johnson dismissed the notion that Apple Stores are popular merely because they sell Apple products. "How do you explain the fact that people flock to the stores to buy Apple products at full price when Walmart, BestBuy, and Target carry most of them, often discounted in various ways," Johnson writes, "and Amazon carries them all -- and doesn't charge sales tax!"
It's the experience that brings customers, Johnson says, and the fact that the sales staff is uncommissioned and therefore motivated to build relationships and "make people's lives better" rather than just to sell stuff.
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Johnson's final advice to retailers is to think big and, yes, differently. "Retailers shouldn't be asking, 'How do we create a store that's going to do $15 million a year?' They should be asking, 'How do we reinvent the store to enrich our customers' lives?'" Johnson wrote.
What do you think? Is Johnson right about Apple Stores? Let us know in the comments.
Image courtesy of Flickr, Randy Le'Moine Photography
This story originally published on Mashable here.
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