Apple is partnering with Burberry to help the luxury fashion retailer create a more personal shopping experience. A new service called “R Message” will integrate with Burberry’s iOS app and allow store associates to directly message select clients. The service will be available by invitation only and piloted before rolling out to every Burberry store.
Apple today debuted four new ads for Apple Music via its YouTube channel. The ads, like the three debuted last month, focus on the service’s capability to help listeners to discover new music. The new ads feature musician Leon Bridges, singer songwriter Shamir, and rapper Flying Lotus. Apple also today announced a new partnership with Burberry that will see the company developing an Apple Music channel exclusively featuring British artists.
We found out earlier this year that Apple’s new retail chief, former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts, made around $73 million in 2014 through her new position at the company. That made Ahrendts the highest paid female executive in the US last year, according to a new report from Bloomberg that puts her total earnings for 2014 somewhere closer to $82.6 million+:
Expand
Expanding
Close
An SEC filing shows that Apple’s SVP of Retail Angela Ahrendts sold AAPL stock totalling $6M in the week in which the Apple Watch hits stores.
It’s nothing out of the ordinary for Apple execs to sell shares from time to time, either to fund a purchase – like a house – or, perhaps more likely given the timing, to pay a tax bill.
Ahrendts was given a compensation package worth $73M when she joined the company, just over $70M of it in stock. Apple explained that the amount partly reflected that she walked away from $37M in unvested Burberry stock – shares she would have received had she remained with the company but lost by leaving.
Around 40% of the total sum she is due to receive from Apple is subject to performance requirements. Given the company is about to embark on what is easily its most complex retail launch ever, with Ahrendts attempting to direct Apple Watch and 12-inch MacBook sales online, she may be feeling just a little nervous at present.
The SEC filing can be seen below.
Photo: Fast Company
Apple is preparing three major new Apple Stores for New York, with two of the stores reaching major new markets for the first time. Apple is developing the first stores for the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, while a new store for the Upper East Side of Manhattan on 74th Street and Madison is also in development, according to sources.
The first Apple Store for Queens will be located in the Queens Center Mall on the second floor. One source says this store will be the largest Apple retail outlet located in a New York mall to date, and Apple is expecting revenues for this store to even beat out some of its flagship counterparts located elsewhere in the state. The store is under construction and is expected to open later in 2015, but an official announcement may come sooner…
Apple has made yet another key hire from the fashion industry: Chester Chipperfield, the Vice President of Digital and Interactive Design at Burberry. Chipperfield was “responsible for User Experience and Digital Design for all channels” and was “highly involved in digital retail initiatives” at Burberry, according to his LinkedIn profile. He confirmed the move to Apple on his profile as well as on Twitter…
If you were puzzled by the fact that the $73M compensation package paid to retail head Angela Ahrendts dwarfed those awarded to other senior Apple execs, including Tim Cook’s $9.2M, Apple explained that it was in large part to compensate her for unvested Burberry stock she lost by leaving the company …
Expand
Expanding
Close
Apple Watch at Colette
Apple has picked up a few new hires and advisors to assist its growing Watch team ahead of the Apple Watch launch currently on track for March. Among them, Apple has recently hired another executive from the fashion industry, this time from Louis Vuitton, in addition to two new hires from the medical industry.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Burberry CEO-turned-Apple Retail SVP Angela Ahrendts returned to posting on her LinkedIn blog after nearly five months over the weekend with a holiday message to her followers: “Let peace begin with me.”
Expand
Expanding
Close
As they’ve done in years’ past, some Apple retail stores this holiday season will repurpose the Genius Bar for additional product space, pick-ups, or other uses as Apple attempts to make the shopping experience for customers as smooth as possible, 9to5Mac has learned.
The repurposing for the holidays will only arrive in some stores depending on needs and traffic, with some stores scheduled to use the Genius Bar area to complete express sales and hold products scheduled for pick-up. Other changes, however, will go beyond the holidays as the stores under new retail chief Angela Ahrendts evolve to better deal with increased foot traffic.
Expand
Expanding
Close
Leaving her role as CEO of Burberry to run Apple’s Retail and Online Stores division as senior vice president has garnered a lot of attention for Angela Ahrendts as Apple gears up for selling the Apple Watch starting next year. Today, Fortune’s 2014 list of the “Most Powerful Women in Business” has taken notice. Fortune writes:
Ahrendts may have given up a CEO title when she left Burberry to head Apple’s $20 billion retail operation, but her new role puts her more in the spotlight than ever. At Apple since May, she’s now key to the success of the company’s new watch.
Ahrendts has so far been readily welcomed by Apple’s Retail Store employees as she began her new role this year, and Fortune ranks her at #29 as her first entry onto the list. Who tops Fortune’s list of “Most Powerful Women in Business” this year? Ginni Rometty, who has her own ties to Apple now thanks to IBM’s newly announced partnership with the iPhone maker.
Apple today has expanded its Executive Leadership Team to include notable Apple Vice Presidents. The team shown on Apple’s official PR Bios website now includes Vice President of Special Projects Paul Deneve, Vice President of of Environmental Initiatives Lisa Jackson, Vice President and Dean of Apple University Joel Podolny, Vice President of Hardware Technologies Johny Srouji, and Vice President of Worldwide Human Resources Denise Young Smith.
Interestingly, each of these positions is fairly new to Apple: Deneve joined from Yves Saint Laurent last year, Lisa Jackson moved over from the EPA last year, Joel Podolny went full-time on Apple University earlier this year, Young Smith was promoted to head of HR earlier this year, and Srouji became head of Hardware Technologies upon Bob Mansfield’s (second) role reduction last year…
Apple is giving its social media department a significant shot in the arm this week. The Cupertino-based company has hired Musa Tariq, the former social media chief for both Nike and Burberry. At Nike, Tariq ran general social media marketing as well as social media partnerships with athletes across all Nike product platforms, and at Burberry he led “strategy and innovation” for social media…
New Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts is continuing her Apple debut tour this week. The former Burberry Chief Executive Officer today toured through Apple’s many stores in the New York City area and she also held a question-and-answer session with select Apple Retail Store managers earlier this week week. Ahrendts today sent a memo with a transcript of some of the Q&A points to all retail employees, and a full copy of that transcript, sent in by a source, is below:
After being on the job for approximately a month and a half, new Apple Senior VP of Retail and Online Stores Angela Ahrendts has sent her first memo to Apple Retail employees. In the memo, Ahrendts discusses Apple’s culture, her visits to stores thus far, and her plans for the future.
“I have spent most of my time getting to know and understand the many functions and teams in Cupertino, along with our short and long term initiatives. I was thrilled to meet many of you at stores in San Francisco and London this month, and I’m looking forward to Tokyo and the Omotesando opening,” Ahrendts said. “Every couple of weeks, we will be visiting stores across the world to see and learn what we do best and hear your thoughts about opportunities ahead,” she added.
We previously profiled Ahrendts plans for transforming Apple retail with a new end-to-end sales experience, mobile payment initiatives, and an increased emphasis on the Chinese consumer. Today’s memo from Ahrendts to employees reiterates many of these points…
Expand
Expanding
Close
SEC filings show that Angela Ahrendts had half of her first allocation of AAPL stock withheld on 1st June – the day it vested, and just one month after joining the company – reports ComputerWorld.
According to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Ahrendts received 16,264 shares in Apple stock when it vested June 1 […]
Ahrendts sold 8,331 shares that same day for a pre-tax total of $5,273,523.
The full value of her stock, which is likely to vest (become eligible for sale) over several years, will add up to $78.5M at the current share price. Her total compensation in her final year as CEO of Burberry was $4.4M – though she did also get a clothing allowance of $42,000 and a car allowance of $30,000 (only at a fashion company could you get more to spend on clothes than a car …).
Selling half your stock at the very first opportunity doesn’t seem to send the best of signals a month into the role, but I guess she needs to buy a house out in the Valley and those aren’t exactly cheap right now.
The withholding of the shares came just over a week before a 7-to-1 stock split, on Monday. The stock split should make AAPL shares more attractive to smaller investors, a shift that could make the share price more volatile.
Via Fortune
Update: These shares were withheld for tax purposes by Apple not sold on the open market
When Ron Johnson finalized his decision to move from leading Apple’s retail strategy to become the Chief Executive Officer of J.C. Penney, the executive jumped in his car to drive to Steve Jobs’ home and notify the Apple co-founder in his living room of the decision. During his short car ride to Jobs’ Palo Alto home in the summer of 2011, Johnson likely thought about how he would explain his choice. But what Johnson likely did not imagine is that it would take nearly three years for Apple to find a true new leader for the stores the duo created.
In one of current Apple CEO Tim Cook’s first major missteps, the long-time operations maestro hired John Browett, formerly of Dixons, to run retail. Browett’s hire was immediately met with skepticism from Apple customers and retail employees, but Cook defended the hire and called the British executive the “best [choice] by far” to run Apple’s retail division. In the six months that he ran retail, Browett cut back on employee hours, initiated layoffs, and fell out culturally with the rest of the Apple executive team.
Alongside Scott Forstall, Browett was ejected from the Cupertino-based company, leaving Tim Cook and head-hunting firm Egon Zehnder, again, with the tall task of finding a suitable replacement for Ron Johnson. As the man who ran Dixons, the United Kingdom equivalent to Best Buy, Browett was in many ways built in the image of Johnson. Johnson ran Apple Retail for nearly a decade, and before that he was an executive at both Target and Mervyns. But unlike Browett, Johnson fit into Apple’s culture and was close with both Jobs and Cook throughout his tenure.
Angela Ahrendts has officially taken the reins of Apple’s new Senior Vice President of Retail and Online Stores. Ahrendts’s last day as the CEO of Burberry was yesterday, and Apple’s website has been updated to reflect Ahrendts beginning her work at Apple today. Her biography, which can be found on Apple’s executive leadership website, explains her role at Apple:
After becoming a Dame of the British Empire in a ‘low key’ ceremony earlier this month, rumor had it that Apple’s new retail chief Angela Ahrendts would be leaving her CEO position at Burberry this month. Apple has never confirmed as much apart from saying Ahrendts would start in the spring back in its original announcement, but today reports claim Ahrendts might stick around at Burberry a little longer. The Guardian reports that while Ahrendts is free to leave after serving her 6 months notice and helping transition in a new CEO, she could earn as much as an £8m or $13.5m bonus if she stays at Burberry through June:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Angela Ahrendts, soon to be ex-CEO of Burberry, is to become a dame today according to the Daily Mail. The retail magnate will become a Dame of the British Empire in a ‘low key’ ceremony according to the British paper, for her contributions to business.
The Queen will not be in attendance, apparently. The government’s business secretary Vince Cable will instead lead proceedings. According to the Daily Mail, Cable will congratulate Ahrendts for her restoration of the Burberry brand. The Mail also believes that Ahrendts will join Apple this month.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKcBNbRSdyI]
In September of 2013, Apple and Burberry partnered up to shoot an entire fashion show using only iPhones. Today Apple released a new thirty-second ad for the iPhone 5s that features footage from the show combined with behind-the-scenes footage of the iPhones used to document the event.
The show was filmed with fourteen different iPhones throughout the venue just prior to the public release of the phone to the public.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVHjvNHRITw]
When Burberry shot video of its London fashion show entirely on the iPhone 5s, one had to suspect this was purely a PR stunt, given that it occurred shortly before it was announced that the company’s CEO was joining Apple as head of retail.
A cynical mind might suspect the same of any video shot with iPhones, but in a piece in The Loop, LeAnn Rimes’ co-producer Darrell Brown insists the decision to use an iPhone to shoot the video for her new single Gasoline and Matches, directed by Ian Padgham, was purely a practical one.
“Using the iPhone camera for the stop motion video made it easy, affordable and portable for us—because of time factors,” said Darrell Brown, the Co-Producer of the record and video. “I had to get Ian to Dublin to film LeAnn while she was there. I had to get Ian to New York State to film Rob. It was so easy to lug around three iPhones instead of other heavy gear. iPhone to film, IPhone for playback of song and iPhone to document the fun.”
Rimes said she was “blown away” by the result.
It’s not recorded which iPhone was used, but the 5s introduced a new camera with larger sensor, wider aperture, dual-color flash and a 120fps slo-mo mode.
Apple’s new senior vice president of retail Angela Ahrendts won’t be taking up the newly created position officially until Spring 2014, but in the meantime Ahrendts has already started the process of transitioning to a new CEO at Burberry. In a blog post on LinkedIn, Ahrendts talks in length about the following her intuition when deciding to take a new job at Apple, much like she had when first joining Burberry, and also outlines her plans for transitioning to new leadership. If you’ve ever heard Tim Cook talk about moving to Apple, ‘following instincts’ will definitely seem like a theme.
And as I look forward to what will define the next generation, I believe it is imperative that great companies add greater social value – the larger the company, the larger the obligation.
Ahrendts notes that the company has started transitioning to new leadership at Burberry in recent weeks and also describes some of her business philosophies in the process:
Expand
Expanding
Close
Fortune is out today with its annual Businessperson of the Year list and this time around a couple notable Apple connections have made the list. Coming in at #4 behind #1Elon Musk, activist investors, and Tencent CEO ‘Pony’ Ma Huateng, is Apple’s recently hired Head of Retail, Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts.
Expand
Expanding
Close
