On May 15, 2001, Steve Jobs leads a small group of journalists to see the first Apple Store: it’s inside the Tyson Corner Center, a shopping mall in one of the richest neighborhoods in Washington.
The opening was scheduled for May 19th, 3 hours before the second store, in Glendale, Los Angeles, California, but only for a matter of time zone. Twenty-three more will follow within a year. Steve Jobs’s choice to open physical stores, just as the famous dot.com bubble had exploded, dragging all the Silicon Valley startups down, was experienced with distrust: to most it seemed a colossal mistake. But already ten years later many will write that the Apple Stores have changed the very idea of a store dedicated only to one company, and today they are among the shopping centers with the highest profitability per square meter.
youtube: Steve Jobs explains the first Apple Store
Ma what was the first Apple Store like? A video allows you to review it. Many things are the same today, such as the symmetry between the rooms and the furnishings that Steve Jobs is said to have borrowed from the Japanese interior architecture of which he was a fan. And then the chance to try computers and software, the Genius Bar to get help from an expert (at the time there was a red phone connected directly to the headquarters in Cupertino). There was a cinema, which no longer exists; and a large chest at the entrance, which has also disappeared since today you can pay to a clerk at the exact point where you made the purchase; obviously there is no longer the space to buy about 3 thousand software, given that today we download the software from the Internet. As happens also in our times, even in the first two Stores, from the first day long queues of enthusiasts were formed waiting to enter ( in the first weekend, 7 thousand and 700 people visited the two stores, spending 600 thousand dollars: a triumph).
Someone wrote that the Apple Store had “turned quiet residential neighborhoods into rock concerts”. Moreover, on the background, clearly visible from the outside, through the windows, was the poster of the Think Different campaign with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.