Apple Stores have been wildly successful and are now a firmly entrenched part of the retail landscape. But they weren’t always that way.
photo credit: Wikipedia
Do you remember? There was once a time when Apple’s going into the retail store business was considered risky and a big stretch for the company. What was a bunch of computer nerds from Cupertino doing, opening stores in malls?
Even within Apple, the strategy was viewed with skepticism. The retail world needs a whole different kind of business thinking: from Finance (all those local sales taxes!) to HR (seasonal employees, benefits, uniforms) to IS &T (point-of-sale systems, free WiFi in each store) and so on.
But the crazy ones (“Here’s to the crazy ones!”) pulled it off.
Glendale Galleria was the second Apple Store opened ever. Granted, it opened the same day (May 19, 2001) as Tyson Corner, but because of the time zone difference the Virginia store got to be first.
There’s a bit of a misconception among new Apple t-shirt collectors (“Hah! you young whippersnappers! Probably don’t remember the rainbow logo!”) that all Apple shirts are printed on American Apparel blanks. For years the typical project team shirt at corporate HQ in Cupertino would be printed on Hanes Beefy T blanks, because they’re fairly well-priced when you have scores of engineers to clothe. So the early Apple Retail division shirts were printed by the same vendors on the same kinds of blanks.
It was a good time to be a tee shirt printing shop in Cupertino. Apple Garamond was still very much in vogue back then too.
Later, as Apple Retail matured and grew and got more clout within the company, they adopted the now-familiar archetype of Apple Myriad font; store name on the front, “Designed by Apple in California” on the back.
These days, Apple Stores in other geographies, especially the marquee stores, get a bit more leeway in their design. That’s nice, because it lets the local team show a bit more of that community’s culture and style. I’ll post some of those designs in the future, like the cool hockey stick design on the Montreal Apple Store shirt, or the flag motif of the Munchen Apple Store shirt.
A personal favorite of mine was the ones we all received during the Christmas rush at the Palo Alto store. Corporate folks could participate in the late night excitement, even if it was just to help bag shoppers’ purchases. So we got issued these Shop Different tshirts:
I thought these were great–a fun play on words for the classic “Think Different” slogan, and the Apple logo with a barcode backdrop.
