History of the Apple Store and How they became so successful (2024)

Apple retail stores are some of the most successful retail stores in the world and are hugely profitable. The sheer level of success they experienced with their retail stores was not predicted by anyone when Steve Jobs went on to unveil the first Apple Store in Virginia in 2001. In fact, when they first opened they faced several negative headlines and many predicted them to fail.

To see how they managed to become one of the most famous retail stores in the world lets look back at their history. Before they had their stores, they heavily used the store within a store concept. This is when you dedicate a section of each store to Apple; however, this was not working for Apple, especially as the stores in which they operated under did not have many incentives to promote their products. With the store in a store concept not working and Steve Jobs returning to Apple, they needed to change something. This change came in the form of the Apple online store. This started becoming very successful, achieving over a million dollars a day in revenue every day very soon after its launch.

After seeing that the store within a store concept was not working for them, they started reducing the number of these types of stores significantly mainly working with Best Buy and Comp USA. After seeing the limitations of this format, Apple needed to change something once again, and this came with the Apple Store. To prepare for their opening and get the layout of the store right, Apple created a mock-up in their warehouses. There were many disagreements when designing the store. Most notably was the Genius Bar, something that Steve Jobs did not even want in his retail stores; although they did end up launching with a Genius Bar in their stores.

After they first opened the store was off to a great start. In the opening weekend, the first two stores saw 7,700 visitors. The stores were also a financial success in their opening weekend. They saw revenue of over $500,000. This success continued when they became the fastest store to achieve $1 billion in revenue, doing it in only three years. Apple then went onto achieving over $1 billion a quarter.

In more recent times Angela Ahrendts the former senior vice president of Apple retail came along and made a lot of changes that have…