This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
Aside from the massive rollout into China The revamp of the online Apple store The revamp of the existing stores Running customer support.
If you have a problem with women who earn more money than you then just say so.
Yes, thanks for confirming. Like I said, she's made no material changes to the Apple Store worthy of her $100M payout. I could care less about a rollout in China (Chinese buy less and less Apple products anyway). The rest that you mention are just minor iterative updates that would happen whether she was there or not. I never said I have a problem with a woman earning more than I do, why would you assume that? I just have a problem with a person undeservingly earning millions and on top of that paying their employees crap. It's ok to be an Apple fan and also criticize Apple where it is deserved, this is not N. Korea.
I have to agree with others here in saying that the Apple Store experience was probably better under Ron Johnson—at least my own experience in the U.S. I bought a new XS a few weeks ago, and went in knowing exactly what I wanted, but it seemed unnecessarily slow and convoluted. I walked in and looked around for a free sales person, couldn’t find one so I waited next to one who was talking to someone else, when he stopped talking to them I told him I wanted a phone and knew exactly what I wanted, he then put me on a waiting list to talk to somebody else who could actually sell me a phone, that guy arrived after about 10 minutes, I told him what I wanted, he then ordered it from somebody else who brought the phone out after 5-8 minutes (while the sales guy gave me unsolicited demos of some of his favorite apps), the guy started to ring me up and I pointed out he had hadn’t brought out the headphone dongle I had also requested, so we went together to get that, then he rang me up and I paid with Apple Pay. It took over a half hour, which was about a half hour longer than it should have, and messed up the rest of my tightly scheduled day.
Of course I’ve had several other Apple Store experiences in recent years, some much worse than this and some better.
I can’t think of any other store where it takes that long to buy something if you walk in knowing exactly what you want and they have it in stock. I remember in the past I could just walk into an Apple Store, tell the first free salesperson what I wanted and they would sell it to me then and there—it took very little time and their ability to handle checkout on a mobile device seemed like magic.
But I don’t think Ahrendts was brought in to improve the US retail experience, I think it was primarily to help with expansion into China as a luxury brand, which she had done for Burberry, and to keep things rolling forward elsewhere.
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
I'd suggest you look at this page: https://www.apple.com/ca/leadership/ There's at least five highly placed women at Apple. That's not even counting the thousands of women in lower positions in the management tree.
I never said there aren't women employees at Apple. Angela is the token woman they drag out the most to say "look, we have women in leadership at Apple". She's accomplished nothing of significance at Apple, yet brings in a massive salary and pays retail employees crap. The only other one they drag out is Lisa Jackson who says the same thing every time on how environmentally friendly their products are. Yeah, we get it. And wow, Apple has a female head of HR; I've rarely seen a company that doesn't have a female head of HR.
Yes, the article says nothing. What enlightened you so much in the article? Ron Johnson is the hero of the Apple Store, plain and simple. Angela has done nothing significant.
The Apple retail experience has gotten steadily worse in the last few years, especially when you have a problem.
Yes, the ability to pay via app is nice... except that it's not clear what products on the shelves you can actually do that with. It turns out that you can't do it for products that have serial-number barcodes that need to be registered... but the app doesn't make that clear. Last time I tried it, I just got a generic error message as if the barcode failed to scan.
When you have an issue, the Apple Store becomes a Kafka-esque nightmare. Even with an appointment, you'll be facing a wait. You'll have to somehow figure out who the one person in the store who can check you in might be, and where they are; there's no signage or particular uniform to make this clear. They'll shuffle you off to someone else, who will eventually take you to a chair at the crowded Genius Bar to wait for yet another person to triage you, and eventually you'll get yet another person to take care of your problem.
That is, if they have the parts on hand in the right box. I had a failed iPad Smart Keyboard. The store I went to was out of replacement keyboards in repair boxes in the back room, so I was told I'd have to come back in next week when they got more of them. That's a two-hour round trip for me. They couldn't ship the replacement to my home, because I'd come into the store to initiate the process. They couldn't give me one of the Smart Keyboards sitting on the display shelf, because it was in retail packaging, not repair packaging.
Days later, it was another multiple-person wait-some-more dance just to get the replacement part out of the back room.
It would've been a much more pleasant experience if there were a customer-service window and a queue, as in any other retail store. What Apple does today is just chaos.
That experience told me that Apple has lost its customer focus. Wasting hours of a customer's time when your product fails under warranty because it wasn't designed properly—the Smart Keyboard hinge is not durable enough and the wires break quickly in regular use—is not something I expected from Apple. Compounding it by having a replacement part sitting in clear sight on a shelf and refusing to make the replacement? There's no way that doesn't result in customer resentment.
Apple has become way too much about the form, and has completely forgotten about function, even in their stores.
I’ve had an iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard cover ever since they came out and never had any failures in the keyboard cover. But then, I take care of my stuff.
That misses the point how poor the service experience is these days. I've had to go through the run around as well.
Plus store managers appears to have lost a lot of autonomy. I had an iPhone that needed repair but was nearing the end of AppleCare and they couldn't honor the option of replacement with a refurb unit under AppleCare vs repair. So I just requested that through the website and got one in the mail.
In the past the Apple retail experience has been more like Nordstroms. Today it's more like Macy's (not a good thing)...and that's under Ahrendts watch.
There used to be much more of customer centric focus...and it's very odd that Ahrendts from Burberry doesn't get that and Johnson from Target did. I think Apple lost more than Johnson did when he left...
I would say Ahrens’s has had more to do with market positioning and product placement in the market. Apple has been completely Burberryed. Its style is distinctive and priced upmarket to deliver high margins. I might hate that, but that was why Cook hired her.
I would say Ahrens’s has had more to do with market positioning and product placement in the market. Apple has been completely Burberryed. Its style is distinctive and priced upmarket to deliver high margins. I might hate that, but that was why Cook hired her.
I've seen this before. Remember when Amelio called macs the "maglite" of computers - they cost more but they're worth it. A short time later, Apple was nearly out of business.
The Apple retail experience has gotten steadily worse in the last few years, especially when you have a problem.
Yes, the ability to pay via app is nice... except that it's not clear what products on the shelves you can actually do that with. It turns out that you can't do it for products that have serial-number barcodes that need to be registered... but the app doesn't make that clear. Last time I tried it, I just got a generic error message as if the barcode failed to scan.
When you have an issue, the Apple Store becomes a Kafka-esque nightmare. Even with an appointment, you'll be facing a wait. You'll have to somehow figure out who the one person in the store who can check you in might be, and where they are; there's no signage or particular uniform to make this clear. They'll shuffle you off to someone else, who will eventually take you to a chair at the crowded Genius Bar to wait for yet another person to triage you, and eventually you'll get yet another person to take care of your problem.
That is, if they have the parts on hand in the right box. I had a failed iPad Smart Keyboard. The store I went to was out of replacement keyboards in repair boxes in the back room, so I was told I'd have to come back in next week when they got more of them. That's a two-hour round trip for me. They couldn't ship the replacement to my home, because I'd come into the store to initiate the process. They couldn't give me one of the Smart Keyboards sitting on the display shelf, because it was in retail packaging, not repair packaging.
Days later, it was another multiple-person wait-some-more dance just to get the replacement part out of the back room.
It would've been a much more pleasant experience if there were a customer-service window and a queue, as in any other retail store. What Apple does today is just chaos.
That experience told me that Apple has lost its customer focus. Wasting hours of a customer's time when your product fails under warranty because it wasn't designed properly—the Smart Keyboard hinge is not durable enough and the wires break quickly in regular use—is not something I expected from Apple. Compounding it by having a replacement part sitting in clear sight on a shelf and refusing to make the replacement? There's no way that doesn't result in customer resentment.
Apple has become way too much about the form, and has completely forgotten about function, even in their stores.
I’ve had an iPad Pro and Smart Keyboard cover ever since they came out and never had any failures in the keyboard cover. But then, I take care of my stuff.
The failures are a thing. There’s a quality program for it.
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
Hmm yeah I don’t think so, the reason they became the top retailer by profit per square foot in the US is indicative or even by definition being special. The knockoff MS and Samsung stores are in the same malls and continue to be eerie, empty places.
Just bought a Xr in the store and don’t feel the store or experience had deteriorated in the slightest.
I would say Ahrens’s has had more to do with market positioning and product placement in the market. Apple has been completely Burberryed. Its style is distinctive and priced upmarket to deliver high margins. I might hate that, but that was why Cook hired her.
The margins haven’t gone up. The new top-tiers are simply more expensive devices that do more. And for most of the lines entry-level options now exist. Don’t need a pricey iPad Pro? Get the $329 entry tier.
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
She's done a lot.
A lot of it, not good.
No no more Genius training out of the stores. Rushing in store training for new Geniuses to get them out in front of customers when they are not ready. This is not The Matrix.
Killing any training time for technicians. In the past they used to get 1-2 hours a month, now, nothing.
New employees are rushed thru a terrible training program when the original one that RJ created was much more customer focused and detail oriented in regards to knowing about Apple products and how they work. Now you get dumb employees who give no F*cks about you or your questions.
Maybe NOT allowing Corporate to use retail as a scapegoat for Apple. Writing shitty code, making poor decisions on hardware, killing product lines, and then distancing itself from the customer and inserting retail as a buffer. Retail can’t fix any of those issues, only report that customers are unhappy and rightly so.
No more questioning Process over people. How about actually listening to customers and doing what is right, not what is right for Apple.
Stop contracting out Applecare support. The companies that they use give unrealistic expectations to customers.
These are things that negatively affect the retail experience and if just a few of these were corrected would make a huge difference in how the general public views Apple.
This is the year where Apple has a tremendous opportunity to turn things around or go further downhill.
I would say Ahrens’s has had more to do with market positioning and product placement in the market. Apple has been completely Burberryed. Its style is distinctive and priced upmarket to deliver high margins. I might hate that, but that was why Cook hired her.
I've seen this before. Remember when Amelio called macs the "maglite" of computers - they cost more but they're worth it. A short time later, Apple was nearly out of business.
That statement isn’t untrue. It’s been documented time and again that modern Macs have a lower corporate TCO than PCs. See IBM white paper, etc. iPhones too have longer useful lifespan, longer support, and resell higher than the knockoffs. These are facts.
Hmm yeah I don’t think so, the reason they became the top retailer by profit per square foot in the US is indicative or even by definition being special. The knockoff MS and Samsung stores are in the same malls and continue to be eerie, empty places.
Just bought a Xr in the store and don’t feel the store or experience had deteriorated in the slightest.
But nothing different to what others had done before (and I gave examples) - except for scale (which I also made patently clear) and hence those profits (which mean very little anyway).
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
I'd suggest you look at this page: https://www.apple.com/ca/leadership/ There's at least five highly placed women at Apple. That's not even counting the thousands of women in lower positions in the management tree.
I never said there aren't women employees at Apple. Angela is the token woman they drag out the most to say "look, we have women in leadership at Apple". She's accomplished nothing of significance at Apple, yet brings in a massive salary and pays retail employees crap. The only other one they drag out is Lisa Jackson who says the same thing every time on how environmentally friendly their products are. Yeah, we get it. And wow, Apple has a female head of HR; I've rarely seen a company that doesn't have a female head of HR.
Yes, the article says nothing. What enlightened you so much in the article? Ron Johnson is the hero of the Apple Store, plain and simple. Angela has done nothing significant.
The article says nothing? She has accomplished nothing of significance? So you read the following (just one example from the article) and said "yeah, so what, I already knew that and anyone would have done exactly the same thing"?
The short answer is technology. At 506 stores around the world, Apple staff start their day with an app called Hello, which briefs them on the most important “need to knows” of the day, often featuring videos from Ahrendts and her team. A second app, Loop, functions as an internal social network where staff can share learnings with each other. “Someone might be selling more phones than anybody else and we ask them to share that on a 20-second video on Loop,” Ahrendts explains. “We use auto-translate and everybody in the world can see what Tom in Regent Street is doing. It’s a huge unlock, just getting all the stores to talk to one another.”
This approach to internal communication – using human-touch internal video conferences – helped employees buy into Ahrendts’s vision at Burberry. The same formula appears to be working at Apple. “Many retailers have become so big they’re removed from their own employees. They are lucky if they keep more than 20 per cent every year. We keep nearly 90 per cent of our full-time employees. We moved 20 per cent of the people in retail last year – they got promoted, took on new positions.”
As to whether anyone is worth $100 million per year... I suppose those billions of dollars in profits have to go somewhere.
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
I'd suggest you look at this page: https://www.apple.com/ca/leadership/ There's at least five highly placed women at Apple. That's not even counting the thousands of women in lower positions in the management tree.
I never said there aren't women employees at Apple. Angela is the token woman they drag out the most to say "look, we have women in leadership at Apple". She's accomplished nothing of significance at Apple, yet brings in a massive salary and pays retail employees crap. The only other one they drag out is Lisa Jackson who says the same thing every time on how environmentally friendly their products are. Yeah, we get it. And wow, Apple has a female head of HR; I've rarely seen a company that doesn't have a female head of HR.
Yes, the article says nothing. What enlightened you so much in the article? Ron Johnson is the hero of the Apple Store, plain and simple. Angela has done nothing significant.
The article says nothing? She has accomplished nothing of significance? So you read the following (just one example from the article) and said "yeah, so what, I already knew that and anyone would have done exactly the same thing"?
The short answer is technology. At 506 stores around the world, Apple staff start their day with an app called Hello, which briefs them on the most important “need to knows” of the day, often featuring videos from Ahrendts and her team. A second app, Loop, functions as an internal social network where staff can share learnings with each other. “Someone might be selling more phones than anybody else and we ask them to share that on a 20-second video on Loop,” Ahrendts explains. “We use auto-translate and everybody in the world can see what Tom in Regent Street is doing. It’s a huge unlock, just getting all the stores to talk to one another.”
This approach to internal communication – using human-touch internal video conferences – helped employees buy into Ahrendts’s vision at Burberry. The same formula appears to be working at Apple. “Many retailers have become so big they’re removed from their own employees. They are lucky if they keep more than 20 per cent every year. We keep nearly 90 per cent of our full-time employees. We moved 20 per cent of the people in retail last year – they got promoted, took on new positions.”
As to whether anyone is worth $100 million per year... I suppose those billions of dollars in profits have to go somewhere.
My impression was most specialists were part time while creatives and geniuses mostly full time. Keeping 90% of 30% of your staff is nice but less that what might be implied...
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
I'd suggest you look at this page: https://www.apple.com/ca/leadership/ There's at least five highly placed women at Apple. That's not even counting the thousands of women in lower positions in the management tree.
I never said there aren't women employees at Apple. Angela is the token woman they drag out the most to say "look, we have women in leadership at Apple". She's accomplished nothing of significance at Apple, yet brings in a massive salary and pays retail employees crap. The only other one they drag out is Lisa Jackson who says the same thing every time on how environmentally friendly their products are. Yeah, we get it. And wow, Apple has a female head of HR; I've rarely seen a company that doesn't have a female head of HR.
Yes, the article says nothing. What enlightened you so much in the article? Ron Johnson is the hero of the Apple Store, plain and simple. Angela has done nothing significant.
The article says nothing? She has accomplished nothing of significance? So you read the following (just one example from the article) and said "yeah, so what, I already knew that and anyone would have done exactly the same thing"?
The short answer is technology. At 506 stores around the world, Apple staff start their day with an app called Hello, which briefs them on the most important “need to knows” of the day, often featuring videos from Ahrendts and her team. A second app, Loop, functions as an internal social network where staff can share learnings with each other. “Someone might be selling more phones than anybody else and we ask them to share that on a 20-second video on Loop,” Ahrendts explains. “We use auto-translate and everybody in the world can see what Tom in Regent Street is doing. It’s a huge unlock, just getting all the stores to talk to one another.”
This approach to internal communication – using human-touch internal video conferences – helped employees buy into Ahrendts’s vision at Burberry. The same formula appears to be working at Apple. “Many retailers have become so big they’re removed from their own employees. They are lucky if they keep more than 20 per cent every year. We keep nearly 90 per cent of our full-time employees. We moved 20 per cent of the people in retail last year – they got promoted, took on new positions.”
As to whether anyone is worth $100 million per year... I suppose those billions of dollars in profits have to go somewhere.
Apple had high retention rate long before Angela took over retail, she had nothing to do with that. Working in retail is such an abhorrent experience that it doesn't take much to have a decent retention rate.
"As to whether anyone is worth $100 million per year... I suppose those billions of dollars in profits have to go somewhere." Really? That's the best intellectual response you can come up with? How about reduce prices so more people can afford Apple products instead of just one person benefiting with an outrageous payout?
I would say Ahrens’s has had more to do with market positioning and product placement in the market. Apple has been completely Burberryed. Its style is distinctive and priced upmarket to deliver high margins. I might hate that, but that was why Cook hired her.
I've seen this before. Remember when Amelio called macs the "maglite" of computers - they cost more but they're worth it. A short time later, Apple was nearly out of business.
That statement isn’t untrue. It’s been documented time and again that modern Macs have a lower corporate TCO than PCs. See IBM white paper, etc. iPhones too have longer useful lifespan, longer support, and resell higher than the knockoffs. These are facts.
Even today, Macs have made a minimal impact in corporate computing. Yes, much higher than in the past, but still miniscule. Sure, they have a higher resale value, but then again they cost more than twice as much so it's a wash.
Hmm yeah I don’t think so, the reason they became the top retailer by profit per square foot in the US is indicative or even by definition being special. The knockoff MS and Samsung stores are in the same malls and continue to be eerie, empty places.
Just bought a Xr in the store and don’t feel the store or experience had deteriorated in the slightest.
You said it yourself, the apple stores themselves are not that special but it's the products they sell that is what drives traffic. Otherwise the microsoft stores would be just as busy as they're a complete knockoff..
This woman makes $100 of millions, dresses in thousand dollar outfits and has made no material changes to Apple retail since Ron Johnson. And, Apple retail employees still make lousy wages. Remind me how she is deserving of this? She is simply the token woman at Apple.
Comments
Of course I’ve had several other Apple Store experiences in recent years, some much worse than this and some better.
I can’t think of any other store where it takes that long to buy something if you walk in knowing exactly what you want and they have it in stock. I remember in the past I could just walk into an Apple Store, tell the first free salesperson what I wanted and they would sell it to me then and there—it took very little time and their ability to handle checkout on a mobile device seemed like magic.
But I don’t think Ahrendts was brought in to improve the US retail experience, I think it was primarily to help with expansion into China as a luxury brand, which she had done for Burberry, and to keep things rolling forward elsewhere.
Plus store managers appears to have lost a lot of autonomy. I had an iPhone that needed repair but was nearing the end of AppleCare and they couldn't honor the option of replacement with a refurb unit under AppleCare vs repair. So I just requested that through the website and got one in the mail.
In the past the Apple retail experience has been more like Nordstroms. Today it's more like Macy's (not a good thing)...and that's under Ahrendts watch.
There used to be much more of customer centric focus...and it's very odd that Ahrendts from Burberry doesn't get that and Johnson from Target did. I think Apple lost more than Johnson did when he left...
Just bought a Xr in the store and don’t feel the store or experience had deteriorated in the slightest.
No no more Genius training out of the stores. Rushing in store training for new Geniuses to get them out in front of customers when they are not ready. This is not The Matrix.
Killing any training time for technicians. In the past they used to get 1-2 hours a month, now, nothing.
New employees are rushed thru a terrible training program when the original one that RJ created was much more customer focused and detail oriented in regards to knowing about Apple products and how they work. Now you get dumb employees who give no F*cks about you or your questions.
Maybe NOT allowing Corporate to use retail as a scapegoat for Apple.
Writing shitty code, making poor decisions on hardware, killing product lines, and then distancing itself from the customer and inserting retail as a buffer.
Retail can’t fix any of those issues, only report that customers are unhappy and rightly so.
No more questioning Process over people. How about actually listening to customers and doing what is right, not what is right for Apple.
Stop contracting out Applecare support. The companies that they use give unrealistic expectations to customers.
These are things that negatively affect the retail experience and if just a few of these were corrected would make a huge difference in how the general public views Apple.
This is the year where Apple has a tremendous opportunity to turn things around or go further downhill.
As to whether anyone is worth $100 million per year... I suppose those billions of dollars in profits have to go somewhere.
"As to whether anyone is worth $100 million per year... I suppose those billions of dollars in profits have to go somewhere." Really? That's the best intellectual response you can come up with? How about reduce prices so more people can afford Apple products instead of just one person benefiting with an outrageous payout?