Apple retail chief adds touch of chic
Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, got a private demonstration of a fancy wireless speaker, the Phantom, and its sound quality seven weeks ago. On the spot, she said she wanted the podlike device, which starts at $1,990, to be sold in Apple Stores.
“She moved incredibly fast, from our first meeting to figuring out how the Phantom would be displayed,” Quentin Sannié, the co-founder of Devialet, the French audio company that makes the white and chrome speaker, said of Ahrendts.
Last week, the Phantom began appearing in 14 Apple Stores in the United States, and the company is discussing where to sell the product next year. The device will get the sort of prominent Apple Store display treatment that is typically reserved for the company’s Beats audio accessories.
Changing strategy
The move is an indication of how Ahrendts, who started at Apple last year, is changing the playbook at some of the iPhone maker’s stores this holiday season and the direction she’s going in: ultra luxe.
Apple Stores typically spotlight the company’s devices, with the most expensive audio accessories topping out in the hundreds of dollars. The Phantom is the first high-end non-Apple gadget that Ahrendts, the former CEO of fashion house Burberry, has brought in since she took the job. It buttresses some of her other recent moves to create more of a luxury Apple retail experience, including initiating private try-on appointments for the most expensive Apple Watches, reducing the numbers and types of accessories that are sold, and pushing manufacturers to make special packaging for gadgets carried in Apple Stores.
Ahrendts “is shaving off some rough edges and completing our sense that the Apple Store is a premium experience,” said Jan Dawson, an analyst at Jackdaw Research.
Her role in bringing in the Phantom also gives a glimpse into how Ahrendts has been operating within the world’s biggest company. Since joining Apple, the 55year-old executive has been relatively quiet publicly. But she moved swiftly and nearly unilaterally on the Phantom, showing how she can push for the products that will shape the store experience.
The products that Apple Stores carry are important because they make up the only customer experience that Apple can fully control, Dawson said. “The stores are the best physical manifestation of the brand,” he said. “Angela is bringing her sensibility to that experience.”
Apple declined to comment and declined to make Ahrendts available for an interview. In a public appearance last month at the Fast Company Innovation Festival, Ahrendts said she had been working toward making Apple Stores “sleeker and smarter,” as well as unifying in-store and online shopping experiences.
As of September, the company had 463 retail stores worldwide and was focused on expanding in China. The stores account for about 12 percent of Apple’s annual $234 billion in sales, Dawson estimated. Store revenue rose about 39 percent over the last 12 months, according to eMarketer, with Apple stores generating $5,775 a square foot, or more than any other retailer in the world.
Ahrendts was known at Burberry for revitalizing the brand, pushing the fashion house into online retail ahead of other luxury apparel companies and forging alliances with tech companies. Cook hired her in 2013 to make sure that Apple’s stores would evolve and expand.
Since coming aboard, Ahrendts has overseen the opening of stores, including 14 in China and Hong Kong, and reduced long lines by creating an online reservation system for customers.
Tech crowd
By bringing the Phantom to Apple, Ahrendts is giving the technology crowd something to love as well. Phantom’s parent company, Devialet, is a brand used by tech executives including Tony Fadell, the chief executive of Nest; Andy Rubin, the co-founder of Android; and Marc Benioff, chief executive of Salesforce.com, said Sannié.
For Devialet, moving the Phantom into Apple’s stores is significant. The Paris company is known for making amplifiers that can cost as much as $30,000. Until the Apple deal came along, its devices were carried in only a handful of exclusive retailers, including Colette in Paris, Harrods in London and the MoMA store in New York City.
Since the initial meeting with Ahrendts, the process of getting the Phantom into Apple’s stores has been smooth, Sannié said. He and his team have visited almost all of the 14 stores where the speaker will initially be sold to look at display possibilities.