Amaya Toman Steve Jobs was heavily involved in building Apple's first branded retail store, according to then-head of sales Ron Johnson. For planning purposes, the company had leased space in a warehouse at its headquarters at 1 Infinity Loop, and Apple's then-executive provided various suggestions throughout the process.
"Every Tuesday morning we had a meeting," Johnson recalled on the latest episode of the Withnout Fail podcast, adding that he's not sure the Apple Store idea would have been possible without Steve's vigorous intervention. He also mentioned that, although Jobs was in the habit of following the famous academic quarter-hour, he was always perfectly in the picture.
The responsible team worked on the design of the stores all week, but according to Johnson, the result was radically different. It wasn't difficult to guess Steve's attitude to the proposed details - the team only needed one look at the boss clutching his chin in the legendary hand gesture to understand what was permissible and what they would rather forget. As an example, Johnson cited the height of the desks, which dropped from 91,44 centimeters to 86,36 centimeters during the week. Jobs strongly rejected this change, because he had the original parameters vividly in mind. In retrospect, Johnson particularly appreciates Jobs' exceptional intuition and feel for future customer response.
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During the first year, Jobs called Johnson every day at eight in the evening to discuss current plans. Steve also wanted to convey his clearly articulated ideas to Johnson so that Johnson could best delegate individual tasks. But there was also conflict in the whole process. This happened in January 2001, when Johnson suddenly decided to redesign the store prototype. Jobs interpreted his decision as a rejection of his previous work. "We finally have something I want to actually build, and you want to destroy it," Jobs scolded. But to Johnson's surprise, an Apple executive later told the executives that Johnson was right, adding that he would be back when everything was done. Later, Jobs praised Johnson in a telephone conversation for having the courage to come up with a proposal for change.
Johnson later left Apple for a directorship at JC Penney, but remained at the company until Jobs' death in October 2011. He currently serves as CEO of Enjoy, a company that creates and distributes new technology products.
Source: Gimlet
