14 DAY TRIAL // Yesterday was the day Apple Stores worldwide turned seven. Happy Birthday Apple Retail Stores! Apple has come a long way since its first stores were set up in Virginia and Glendale back in 2001, from the architectural structure to the way it handles its business.
MacDailyNews notes that the first two Apple Stores opened not far from home (California), in Tysons Corner, Virginia and Glendale, on May 19, 2001. The latest such store opened was on Boylston Street in Boston, just last week, on Thursday. It is currently the largest Apple Retail Store in the United States, which explains the GRAND opening.
Apple has 210 stores scattered worldwide at the moment. 182 of these are found across 37 US states, while the UK hosts 15. Canada can show off with plans for 40+ Apple Retail stores by the end of 2008, while Japan has just seven.
"Ron Johnson, Apple's head of retailing, said Wednesday that an international retail presence would be an important driver of future sales," Reuters reports. "Today, Apple is about 50 percent international revenue and about 50 percent in the U.S., Johnson stated. "We increasingly want to get our retail presence out in the other countries."
Starting with this month, the Apple Retail Store staff got new uniforms, while three job titles have been renamed. The Mac Genius is now "Genius", Mac Specialists are now simply called "Specialists", and Business Consultants are now dubbed "Business Partners," bearing a dark-blue shirt that says "Business" on it, "to provide more clarity and [to] better reflect their broader range of duties," ifoAppleStore was reporting. Geniuses and Creatives will wear dark blue, specialists will wear light blue, while the Concierge will wear orange, according to the same source.
The uniforms of the Concierges bear the slogan "I know people," a move that Michael Gartenberg of Jupiter Research, a technology consultancy, sees as "really rais[ing] the bar in terms of technology customer service."