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Apple has put the finishing touches on its new flagship store in San Francisco this week and gave the press an early preview of the store that is set to open to the public this weekend.
The new store features new design elements as well as community programs including the ‘genius grove’ where where customers can get support under a canopy of local trees and ‘the plaza’ a public space that will be open 24 hour a day. Visitors will enter the store through 42-foot tall sliding glass doors.
“This is not just a store,” Angela Ahrendts, the company’s head of retail, said Thursday during a sneak peek for reporters at the store, the first in the world to feature the company’s new retail design. “We want people to say, ‘Meet me at Apple, did you see what’s going on at Apple?'”
Thursday’s press preview came on the 15th anniversary of the opening of Apple’s first retail stores. The company largely defined what a modern electronics-buying experience should look and feel like. But some say the novelty has worn off, with Samsung and Microsoft successfully mimicking part of Apple’s retail feel.
The company has tasked Ahrendts, the former Burberry CEO who became head of the company’s online and in-store sales in 2014, to turn things around in retail, as well as figure out how to sell the Apple Watch, the company’s “most personal device yet.” Apple a year ago also promoted Jony Ive to the newly created position of chief design officer to give him more oversight over projects like retail store redesigns.
“We have reimagined what the future of Apple retail will be,” she said. “We have said that we will know we’ve done really great if it feels more like a town square.”
The store will be nearly double the size of the one its replacing with a total of 24,819 square feet of retail space. The old store attracted over 13 million customers since it opened in 2003.
Agencies/Canadajournal
