After 9to5Mac reported this weekend that the NYC Apple Store employees started the process toward unionizing, it seems that a retail location in Atlanta will become the first in the U.S. to file a union election, per a report.
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There are many things to love about Apple Stores.
The designs are great. Either funky and modern, with loads of glass and natural light, or a respectful yet contemporary conversion of a classical building.
You can freely play with the products, without any sales pressure. If you have questions, there will generally be someone who knows the answer …
A report from the Wall Street Journal today details Apple’s minuscule success in India with iPhone, specifically highlighting Amit Rajput, who runs a counter selling iPhones in the country with a population of over 1.3 billion. Rajput spoke on how one iPhone sale a day is considered ‘lucky’, with his coworkers at the Samsung, Oppo and Nokia counters selling well over ten devices daily.
The sales decline comes as a stark contrast to 2013, where Rajput recalled selling 80 iPhones per day. He says today, most Indian consumers don’t spend more than $300 on a smartphone — reducing Apple’s presence in the country dramatically.
Apple’s Michigan Avenue, Chicago flagship store has been officially put up for sale by its landlord, Walton Street Capital.
A rendering of the expected look when renovations are complete
Apple’s first retail store in Brooklyn has been a long time coming. Following years of speculation, the plan was confirmed back in 2014, when it was revealed that the location would be at 247 Bedford Avenue, in Williamsburg, though the project later fell behind schedule.
The giant screens that form part of the new Apple Store design created by Jony Ive reportedly cost $1.5M each.
We got out first look at the screens at the opening of the Brussels store in Belgium, as well as a tour of a mockup in December. We reported last September that Memphis would be one of the first U.S. stores to get the new design, and that store finally opened at the weekend at 2031 West Street in Germantown – but Albany Crossgates, NY, got there first earlier this year …
Apple was today granted a design patent on the beautiful Istanbul store that opened back in 2014. The store in Turkey’s largest city is known as the ‘Glass Lantern.’ The store has a glass rectangle atop the larger store beneath, each side of the rectangle comprising a single pane of glass, with a water feature covering the rest of the store’s roof.
A second patent was granted for the Apple Store in Zhongjie Joy City, China. This two-story design with a suspended upper floor and floor-to-ceiling glass walls spanning the full height of the building is one Apple is using in a number of new stores.
Patently Apple notes that the Turkish store was awarded the Supreme Award for Structural Engineering Excellence in the year it opened.
Apple has previously been awarded patents for its Fifth Avenue and Shanghai stores, Steve Jobs among those credited as an inventor in the case of the New York store. The company has also successfully trademarked store interior designs in Europe.
Mark Gurman revealed on Friday that Apple has introduced a new reward program designed to boost iPhone sales in Apple Stores.
The program’s goal is to push Apple retail employees to sell more iPhones by promising rewards and all-expense paid vacations to Cupertino, California to employees who sell the most iPhones in their region, according to sources.
I do, of course, recognize the pressure Apple is under following flat iPhone sales last quarter and the company warning that its revenue will this quarter see its first ever year-on-year decline since 2003. But Tim Cook has himself repeatedly claimed that Apple focuses on making great products rather than sales numbers, repeating this line earlier this month.
Offering staff incentives to push iPhone sales strikes me as a mistake with the potential to damage the company’s image …
While retail head Angela Ahrendts last year confirmed an earlier report that the company would be opening its first Apple Store in Singapore, she didn’t reveal the location. The address had, though, been reported as 170 Orchard Road in an email from a fitness company advising that its branch there would be closing to make way for a new Apple Store.
Photos posted by iPhone Hacks appear to show work underway at the address as the windows are covered. While there’s still no definitive evidence that this is the location, it looks like we may not have to wait too much longer before we find out.
Apple announced last year that solar energy will power all of the company’s operations in Singapore, including the new store.
Apple is looking very comfortably on-track for its goal of 40 retail stores in China by October as it has announced that two more stores will open this month. That will bring the total in China to 32, four of them opening this month alone …
It’s only a fortnight since Apple opened its 27th retail store in China, but there’s no sign of any let up in pace as the company heads towards its goal of 40 Apple Stores in China by October of next year. It has just added number 28 to its website, noting that the new store in Nanning will open on Saturday.
The store will be located inside the upmarket MixC complex in the Qingxiu District. In addition to a shopping mall with designer brands, the complex also boasts a 5-star hotel, upscale offices and a high-rise luxury residential building.
Nanning, located close to the border with Vietnam, is known as China’s “Green City” due to the tropical plant-life in its many parks. The city is home to around 6.6 million people.
Planning documents obtained by the Chicago Tribune reveal Apple’s spectacular plans for a new flagship store on the north bank of the Chicago River. Fittingly for the city which was home to Frank Lloyd Wright, the design echoes the Midwestern Prairie Style buildings created by the famous architect.
Apple confirmed the plans to the Tribune, which reports that they have already been granted approval, with a formal presentation set to ‘rubber-stamp’ the decision on Thursday …
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One of the things Apple’s retail head Angela Ahrendts said in her interview with Fast Company‘s Rick Tetzei is that Apple had made the decision to back away from Black Friday sales because “being good to your employees will always be good for business.”
Rather than extending store hours for Black Friday events, or just turning the stores into even more crowded places during what has increasingly turned into Black November rather than just Black Friday, Ahrendts decided to give staff a break. That’s great and should be applauded but why not just do an online sale? Do the computers need the time off too?
Even more curious, Apple, who controls US retailer pricing, seems to be letting every US retailer knock huge amounts off of all Apple products for Black Friday…
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A former Apple Store employee has been charged with grand larceny and other crimes after allegedly using fraudulent credit and debit card details to purchase an incredible $997,000 worth of Apple gift cards in just three months.
24-year-old Ruben Profit is accused of carrying out the fraudulent purchases while working at the Apple Store in the Queens Center Mall in Elmhurst, the company’s first retail store in Queens. All of the purchases were made between August and October, reports NBC New York …
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The Apple Company Store on its 1 Infinite Loop campus, which closed for major refurbishment back in June, will re-open at 10am on Saturday – the same day its first Belgium store opens. Apple announced the Grand Reopening on its retail site.
With Jony Ive now having responsibility for all aspects of design – including retail stores – it should be interesting to see how it’s changed.
The Company Store has always been quite a different experience to all other Apple retail stores, with no iPhones, iPads or Macs on sale. Instead, the store has majored on Apple-branded clothing and other brand-oriented products. But sources told us back in June that things may be very different when it reopens …
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In the run-up to Saturday’s opening of the first Apple Store in Belgium, Apple has uploaded a video showcasing the artists behind the comic art it is featuring on the hoardings outside the store. Brussels is known for its comic art, with many young artists moving there to further their careers.
Apple asked 20 artists to each create five images to help tell the story of the city. The paintings are displayed along with the slogan ‘The creativity continues.’
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=41&v=dC7WPAH35AQ]
Featuring local artists at soon-to-be-opened stores seems to now have become standard practice for Apple. We’ve seen calligraphy used in Hangzhou, a combined painting and photo in Chongqing, and a mural in Miami.
![Speck_DFI_Ad_CS-Stacked-Cube_728x90_v1[2]](https://9to5mac.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/09/speck_dfi_ad_cs-clear_rev_728x90_v1.jpg?w=1000 "Video: All four colors of Apple's new iPhone Lightning Dock reviewed")
Apple has now officially confirmed the opening date of its first Belgian retail store, opening in Brussels on 19th September. The date is shown on the hoarding outside the new store, located on Avenue de la Toison d’Or (also known as Gulden Vlieslaan), and was confirmed by Apple to ANV.
The wording on the hoarding reads ‘Creativity, to be continued,’ and features paintings by local artists (below). The store is a large one, at 1500 square metres, reports iCulture. The store is not yet shown on Apple’s website.
We first saw job listings for Apple Store-specific roles in Brussels as long ago as December 2014, with more seen in May of this year …
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We first revealed last month that Apple is requiring a number of third-party accessory suppliers to revamp the packaging of products sold in the company’s retail stores to provide a more Apple-like appearance. We knew then that the detailed spec included mostly white packaging, simpler fonts, new photography, higher-quality materials, and more consistent compatibility labeling.
A copy of an internal memo obtained by Business Insider reveals that the requirement for new photography extends as far as “consistent product shot photo angles.”
The new designs bring an elevated look and feel to our third-party bags and cases while creating consistency across the brands to make our Accessory walls more visually appealing and easier to navigate.
In quoting from the memo, BI says that it has slightly rephrased it to protect its source after learning that Apple has begun issuing slight variations to internal communications issued to different groups of people, to help it identify sources of media leaks.
We got our first look at the new packaging a few days after we first learned of it.
Tim Cook tweeted his thanks today to the “thousands of Hong Kong customers” who attended the opening of the company’s fourth Apple Store in Hong Kong.
Plans for the store were first announced in 2013, with construction photos first seen in February. Apple announced the opening date on its website a couple of weeks ago. The additional store is part of Apple’s ambitious expansion program in China, having so far opened six of the 25 new stores it plans to open within two years.
Photos of the new store can be seen below …
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We learned last August that Apple was planning to open its first retail store in the Middle East, with local media reporting shortly afterwards that the location was Dubai – and would be the world’s largest Apple Store. The Khaleej Times has now put a number on that, reporting that the store will be 50,000 square feet, and is expected to open this August.
Apple’s first store in the Middle East will be located at Mall of the Emirates and it will be the world’s largest retail store of the iPhone maker, sources have confirmed to Khaleej Times.
The store is under construction and it is expected to open doors to Apple fans in August 2015. The estimated 50,000-sq foot store is close to the new Fashion District in the mall with the main entrance most probably from level 2.
London’s Covent Garden store was the world’s largest Apple Store when it opened, occupying three floors totalling 40,000 square feet – making the Dubai store 25% bigger.
Tim Cook visited Dubai in February of last year, also visiting Abu Dhabi, where the Khaleej Times reports the newly opened Yas Mall is likely to host Apple’s second retail store in the UAE.
The United Arab Emirates is a natural home for Apple, as the 19th richest country in the world, and an increasingly popular premium tourist destination with an emphasis on luxury goods. The Mall of the Emirates counts 80 designer brands among its 700 stores, as well as two 5-Star hotels and an indoor ski resort.
Via Patently Apple
Following the try-on appointments that allowed 15 minutes hands-on time with an Apple Watch (or an hour for the Edition), Apple is offering Apple Watch Basics workshops at selected retail stores. Appointments can be booked now, and the earliest workshops take place on the official (or perhaps now unofficial) launch date of 24th April.
It’s unlikely many people will have received their Apple Watch by this date, and you won’t be able to buy one in-store before June, but if the tutorial videos or unofficial cheat-sheet still leave you wanting more, the workshops seem a good opportunity to get to grips with the new device …
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The Apple Store in Birmingham, England – one of the stores affected
Yesterday’s large-scale data outage left a number of Apple Stores in Europe offline, reports Business Insider.
For about two hours this morning, employees couldn’t check in to work, stores couldn’t make sales, and Genius Bar appointments couldn’t be kept. Employees couldn’t check email until 3 pm London time.
The issues meant that store staff were unable to use their card machines to take payments, leading stores to resort to old-fashioned mechanical paper machines (photo below) …
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Tim Cook noted during Monday’s earnings call that Apple was “investing like crazy” in China, but he took the opportunity of his current visit to the country to put a specific number on the company’s retail expansion plans: it will open 25 new Apple Stores in Greater China within the next two years. Greater China includes both Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Speaking to local media, Cook also said that China would in time become Apple’s biggest market, reports the WSJ …
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A few weeks after Apple was granted a European trademark on the key design elements of its retail stores, the company has been awarded a U.S. patent on the iconic glass cube design of its Fifth Avenue store in Manhattan. Steve Jobs is one of those credited as an inventor.
Patently Apple reports that Apple also applied for a trademark for the design back in 2010, but no decision has yet been made on that.
Apple was granted a patent for the similarly iconic glass cylinder design for its Shanghai store back in 2012.
Apple has been renewing the interior design of its stores around the world, and creating a new organizational structure as Angela Ahrendts focuses on further international expansion. It is reportedly working on the largest Apple Store in the world in Dubai.
