20 Years of Apple Retail Stores
Twenty years ago this week, Apple opened its first brick and mortar retail stores to applause, cheering, and seemingly endless lines of smiling faces. What started at two malls in Tysons Corner, Virginia and Glendale, California became a tradition spanning two decades, generations of customers, and more than five hundred new stores.
See also: Tim Cook.
Previously:
Kind of ushered in a new era of tech consumerism, perhaps especially in the iPod era and the early days of standing in line for an iPhone.
But also, it's one of the many places where conventional wisdom said "don't do that, it'll be costly and never work" and Steve said "nah", did it, and was quite right.
I hope they find a way to fix some of the Ahrendts missteps, but the 2001 concept may simply be too hard to do at the 2021 scale of Apple Inc.