Any one of us would have been proud to create the retail giant Best Buy. It’s a powerhouse.
At its peak, Best Buy controlled about 19 percent of the electronics market. They’ve sold lots and lots of stuff. And they still do. Any kind of television or MP3 player or computer you want, Best Buy probably has it.
If you could collect all of the profit from just one Best Buy store, that would be extremely cool, right? You’d have every customer in the neighborhood, and you could sell each one exactly what they wanted.
Now compare that to a store that sells just one brand of computer. Just one brand of MP3 player. Just one brand of smartphone or tablet.
That doesn’t seem like it would do as well, right?
But the profit per square foot from an Apple Retail Store is six times the profit of a Best Buy.
Six times.
Apple Stores were supposed to be a huge failure
According to the book Inside Steve’s Brain, retail expert David A. Goldstein told Business Week that:
I give them two years before they’re turning out the lights on a very painful and expensive mistake.
And Goldstein wasn’t some clueless lone voice. That was the overwhelming consensus. In fact, you couldn’t find anyone in 2000 who thought the Apple Store was a good idea.
Anyone, that is, except Steve Jobs.
Their costs are higher
You may have noticed that you don’t find Apple Stores in strip malls or shoppettes.
You find them, in fact, in