14 DAY TRIAL // An interesting excerpt from the New Yorker’s lengthy profile of Jonathan Ive, Apple’s chief designer, reveals that the company is dead serious about changing the look and feel of its stores.
Together with Angela Ahrendts, the new retail boss poached from Burberry for a whopping $73 million (€64 million), Ive will help infuse a feeling of luxury in at least some parts of the company’s iconic stores.
VIP area in the works
As previously reported, Apple plans to redesign its stores with new seating areas and display units for the upcoming Apple Watch. There’s even a rumor that the more expensive versions of the wearable will be placed in safes, perhaps thick glass cubes that only a staffer can open upon request.
One new and very interesting tidbit has emerged from the New Yorker piece on Jonathan Ive. The guy commands almost every aspect of Apple when it comes to aesthetics, and the retail stores are no exception to the rule. Ive is in talks with Ahrendts to create a VIP area, one that might actually sport carpets. Here’s the excerpt:
“Apple had not, overnight, become an élite-oriented company — and it would sell seventy-five million iPhones in the final quarter of 2014, many of them in China — but I wondered how rational, and pure of purpose, one can make the design of a V.I.P. area. Ive later told me that he had overheard someone saying, ‘I’m not going to buy a watch if I can’t stand on carpet.’”
Perhaps this is why Bob Bridger resigned
Apple already sells expensive products, but these products are still well within the reach of many. However, some believe that Apple doesn’t need to promote itself as luxury brand, on top of everything else.
Perhaps, then, this is part of the reason why Bob Bridger – who has been instrumental in the development of Apple retail stores across the years – has announced his resignation.
Sources familiar with the matter told ifoAppleStore that Ahrendts was planning a major overhaul of Apple’s retail stores, and that Bridger was none too happy about it.