Vogue Business:
Since 2015, Apple has opened a series of high-profile flagships to promote its brand, each requiring, in the company’s words, “substantially” more investment than its typical stores. “We are now opening fewer, larger stores so that you can get the full experience of everything that’s Apple,” Ahrendts explains as we pick our way past Carnegie Library’s historic pillars and through concrete and rubble to where a hard-hat brigade are inserting beacons into the walls.
It’s a continuation of founder Steve Jobs’s original vision. “Steve told the teams when he opened retail 18 years ago, ‘Your job is not to sell, your job is to enrich their lives and always through the lens of education.’”
It’s hard to argue with that original vision, seeing as it has created the single most profitable retail environment in the world.
Retail is broken, in part, because too many American working people have been commoditized to a degree that many of them can’t afford not to shop with Amazon or WalMart. At least, those that actually still have jobs of any kind.
Everywhere I see red. Red banners, red letters, red numbers all screaming “Sale”. You can’t escape it. And there are so many sales that the sale price has become the normal price.
As such, it makes “sales” boring. So much so that you don’t buy anything because you think, “There’ll be another sale next week…”
Retail needs to bring back experience eg lounges in stores to relax, game consoles set up, kid’s reading areas, product demonstrations etc all things that existed in retail about a decade ago. Now, it’s just wall to wall stock and those damn red sales signs.
I am so bored of shopping.