It’s official—Apple’s new Sr. V-P Retail John Browett has been on the job since April 20th, when he was officially granted 100,000 shares of stock that could net him millions of dollars over the next five years. Browett took over the position from Ron Johnson, who left last November to become president of retailer JC Penney. Browett has been seen on Apple’s Cupertino campus frequently since last year, and has attended at least one retail store grand opening. According to documents filed with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this morning, Browett will receive “restricted stock units” that are vested, or redeemable, for common stock over a five-year period. After receiving the common stock, Browett is free to keep or sell the shares at any time, at the prevailing price. The vesting schedule is: 5,000 units on October 20, 2012, another 15,000 units on the first anniversary of the grant date, and 20,000 units on each of the second, third, fourth and fifth anniversaries of the grant date. The grants assume that Browett continues to be employed by Apple through each vesting date. Based on yesterday’s closing stock price, the entire stock grant would be worth $56,028,000. Browett’s annual compensation hasn’t been announced yet, although that information could be included in quarterly financial documents to be filed with the SEC later this week. Download (pdf) the SEC filing that details the stock grant.
The natural evolution of the personal computer industry has brought a rare change to Apple’s retail stores: the company has swapped out the Macintosh computers at the kids tables and replaced them with iPads. Store visitors have noticed the change-out over the last 10 days without any fanfare from Apple. The kids tables are an original fixture of the retail stores, accompanied by eye-catching black, spherical foam seats. The tables and Macs at the rear of most stores have been magnets to kids who visit the stores and find the computer screens engaging. But since the introduction of the iPad two years ago, the number of games and education software titles has skyrocketed for the device, while the same categories for the Mac have stagnated. The touch-screen of iPads has also proven to be even more attractive to kids than a Mac screen, bringing about last week’s banishment of Macs. Apple infrequently makes changes to its retail store designs, and only after careful study and consideration that it will continue an excellent customer experience.
At almost the same moment that Apple CEO Tim Cook was telling financial analysts that sales in Spain were weak during the latest quarter, the company was posting job listings for a future store in Zaragoza. The city of 700,000 is located in the northeast part of the country, between the existing Apple stores in Madrid and Barcelona. As first noted by Applesfera, the job listing doesn’t list a specific location for the store. However, it’s likely the store will be inside one of the region’s shopping malls, such as the Gran Casa mall near city center. During a quarterly conference call with financial analysts on Tuesday, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that sales in Spain had been “weak” during Q2. He explained that sales in Spain were up during the quarter, but less than the growth rate in Europe or worldwide. In response to an analyst’s question, Cook said the weak sales weren’t related to changes in iPhone subsidy rules made by two Spanish carriers. Instead, the lower results were due to the country’s “terrible economic situation,” Cook said. Based on construction schedules, the Zaragoza store could open by October 2012.
There were few superlatives in Apple’s financial results announced today, including the retail store operation, but the figures did confirm the continued success of the company’s global expansion, particularly into China. All of the results were records for the March quarter, but none achieved an all-time record, which is all held by the previous quarter that includes the Christmas holiday season. Overall, Apple reported sales of $39.1 billion for the second quarter, up 59 percent from the year-ago quarter, but down 15.5 percent from the previous quarter. Company profit was $11.6 billion, an increase of 96 percent from the same quarter of 2011. On the retail side, revenue were $4.3 billion, a substantial 38 percent increase from 2011. Retail store profit totaled $1.1 billion, up 36 percent from the same quarter of 2011. Other retail figures followed the same pattern—no records, but solid results. The stores sold 826,000 Macs during the quarter, contributing to an overall sales increase that beat the global PC market. Apple’s stores hosted a substantial 85 million visitors, who spent an average of $12.2 million per-store. read more…
A third Apple retail store will open this Saturday to serve the suburbs of Madrid (Spain), inside the brand-new Gran Plaza 2 shopping center northwest of city center. The store is the sixth to open in Spain, making it among the fastest-growing countries for Apple’s retail chain. Gran Plaza 2 is located in an upscale residential area, which mall management boasts has “the highest per capita income” in the region. The new mall covers about 619,000 square-feet with 190 shops, and will hold its own grand opening at the same time as the Apple store. The store will open at 10 a.m., and will be among several Apple stores that will not be open for business on Sundays.
Tipsters have identified yet another store on Apple’s list of locations that will move and expand to accommodate the growing base of visitors, this time at the Arden Fair store in Sacramento (Calif.). According to sources, the store will move from its upper-level, 30-foot wide space to the former Pottery Barn space on the ground floor. The move will give the store an impressive 78-foot wide storefront, and will upgrade the store’s interior from about 3,650 square-feet to 9,685 square feet. A visit to the current store reveals vintage features: wood floor and frosted glass wall partitions. During a recent weekday visit, there were 31 employees providing service to at least 90 customers, mostly concentrated near the rear Genius Bar. The future space will allow more room for product displays, but also provide more tables for personal training and product setup. A timeline for the Apple store move isn’t known—the future space is now occupied by a temporary Ann Taylor store while that store’s home space is being renovated. photos
Apple continues to expand its suburban coverage of Rome (Italy) with the grand opening of the Porta di Roma retail store this Saturday. The store is located next to Benetton on the ground level of the mall, which is about 13 miles northeast of city center. Apple’s only existing Roma Est store opened in March 2007 and covers the eastern region of the city. The new Rome store opens at 10 a.m. mall plan
The very first sighting of a impressive new Apple store-within-a-store concept has appeared at a Walmart store in Arkansas, just 20 minutes from the mass merchandiser’s home office. The new displays could be the prototype for a rumored expansion of in-store Apple displays to Sam’s Club, the warehouse retailing division of Walmart. The displays feature tall, double-sided, back-lit graphics, a clean-looking wood table, live display products and under-table accessory storage with security glass. The new look updates previous Apple product displays within Walmart stores that have been notoriously small, invisible and poorly maintained. The store is located in Rogers, a town of 56,000 residents located along I-540 in the northeastern part of the state. Apple pioneered the store-within-a-store concept at CompUSA stores in 1997, but Apple’s graphic design was always better than CompUSA’s maintenance and staffing of the product area. The concept lives on at Best Buy and Target stores, where products are usually spread over several display areas. Update: Commenters report both that the design is already in use in other countries, and that an employee of the store said it was the “first” in the United States. more photos
One of Apple’s most high-profile authorized resellers is moving from its epic location, directly across the alley from the Boylston Street (Boston) Apple store, and refocusing its operation only on business and professional customers. Tech Superpowers founder Michael Oh explains, “We’ve determined that we can compete with Apple, but we’ve just stopped wanting to.” Oh says that on May 1st the company will move five blocks away and give up the walk-in consumers they’ve handled since the company was founded in 1992. Oh says the relocation and change in business focus simply reflects a change in the Apple market itself, and is not the result of a knock-out punch by the Apple store. read more…
An agreement by major cellular carriers in the U.S. to create a nationwide database of stolen handset IDs is expected to reduce theft, but could also provide substantial assistance to Apple’s store employees, who have often been face-to-face with thieves requesting service on their stolen goods. In at least two cases in Canada, store staffers were handed stolen products, including an iPhone, but did not detect the theft and didn’t return the products to their owners. Today Julius Genachowski, chair of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), announced that AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile have agreed to create individual stolen handset databases over the next 12 months, and to integrate them six months after that. The databases would be linked to the carriers’ networks, allowing them to “kill,” or render inoperative, any reported stolen phone. Wireless carriers in several other countries already have such databases, and officials there report that theft rates have been reduced substantially. read more…
Thanks to an e-book written by a former Apple store Lead Genius, we now officially know that attractive girls receive lots of attention at the Genius Bar. Okay, it’s not the most breathtaking information ever revealed about Apple’s retail stores. But as one of several anecdotes in Bartending: Memoirs of an Apple Genius by Stephen Hackett, it does paint a fuller portrait of what it’s like to staff the Genius Bar and cope with customer troubles and tirades. Available as a rather short 52-page download for the iPad, Hackett explains more about the psychology of Apple customers than of the company’s secrets, as it turns out. He recalls visitors who would bring in seven year-old portables needing repair (sorry, no parts), desktops with roaches inside (hey!), and fried hard drives that left owners without their irreplaceable family photos (eventually recovered). In one anecdote, Hackett claims that in a fit of pique, he once took a crowbar to an iPhone that wouldn’t stop buzzing. He left Apple in 2008 after two years and took a job as an IT support specialist for a Memphis (Tenn.) non-profit. He’s been writing for various Web sites, and recently rebranded his own site as 512pixels.net to document technology, journalism and design. As for the old days, Hackett was sentimental in an earlier interview. “Getting to surprise and delight customers never got old.” Nice. Purchase his book for $4.99, in both ePub and Kindle formats, and consider a subscription to his Web site to help keep an ex-Genius afloat.
A southern California consumer protection agency has levied a $200 civil penalty against a local Apple retail store after investigators conducted a price accuracy inspection there last August, and found the store charged more than the lowest advertised price for a product. The incident occurred just 11 days after the store held its grand opening, which might help to explain the mis-pricing. According to the Los Angeles County Weights and Measures agency, the Americana at Brand (Glendale) store sold an item for $70 more than the stated price on the packaging. The violation is a criminal misdemeanor under state law (12024.2 B&P), which provides a fine of from $25 to $1,000, and up to one year in county jail. However, a criminal penalty was not imposed in this case. Instead, the agency chose to impose a civil penalty on the store. Under the law, payment of that penalty by the accused provides a defense for the criminal violation, which is then dismissed. The state’s pricing laws are focused both on outright fraud by retailers, but also to encourage companies to maintain accurate pricing databases that form the basis of their point-of-sale technology.
The arrival of an Apple retail store in Halifax (Canada) has been inevitable in Chris Duffie’s mind for several years. He’s the owner of authorized reseller Halifax Mac Store, and has had the market pretty much to himself for a decade. So when rumors began swirling late last year that an Apple store was arriving at the Halifax Shopping Centre just three miles away, his decision to close down his retail business was an easy one. As reported by the Chronicle Herald newspaper yesterday, the Mac Store will close forever on April 13th, and Duffie will take his expertise over to Torusoft, a local consultant and systems integrator. Together, the companies will focus on service, support and consulting for the Apple community, a field that Apple stores generally doesn’t touch. A Mac Store sales manager will join Duffie’s at Torusoft, but seven other of his employees will be laid off, possibly picking up consulting gigs with Torusoft. Duffie’s decision has been mirrored by Apple resellers around the world. Some have transitioned their focus to service, but others have gone out of business entirely after an Apple store arrived.
Just months after appointing a new retail chief, and in the midst of continuing workplace complaints by retail store employees, Apple is revising its scheduling practices that will pressure employees who are already suffering from larger crowds of visitors. Apple’s stores have become more crowded, noisy, and stressful as their products have risen in popularity and more products have come to market. In fact, some stores have seen their visitor traffic double annually over the past four years, sources say. The increased traffic means staffers must sell, train and repair while elbow-to-elbow with colleagues, or even customers, and amidst more distractions and noise. Now, the company is changing weekend work requirements, and increasing the mandatory minimum hours for part-timers. The changes seem to have substantial benefits for Apple, but few for its employees, and could result in many resignations from employees who are unable to comply with the new requirements. read more…
Just one month after the reveal of Apple’s first-ever store in Sweden and Scandinavia, to be located in Stockholm, another job listing confirms the company will open a store in the city of Malmö on the southwest tip of the country. The coastal city is the country’s third-largest, and is just 40 minutes across Öresund Sound from Copenhagen (Denmark), accessible by trains and a modern bridge-tunnel. As first spotted by AlltOmMac, the job listing doesn’t include a specific location for the future store. It might be located in city center or within one of the seven major shopping malls scattered around the city. Based on construction schedules, the store could open in October, about a month after the Stockholm store is scheduled to open.