“It started with one store at Tysons Corner Center in Virginia, just outside of Washington,” Doug Gross reports for CNN. “Ten years and more than 300 stores later, it’s become a retailing venture unique in the world of consumer electronics. The Apple retail store, the stylized and shiny public face of the Cupertino, California-based gadget giant.
“As the 2000s were just dawning, it was far from a sure thing. ‘Around the time Apple started to roll out, Gateway’s products were going the other way,’ said Adam Hanft, CEO of marketing and branding firm Hanft Projects, referring to the PC makers (they of the cowhide-designed boxes) who eventually gave up on their own retail-store model in 2004,” Gross reports. “‘If you go back and look at what all the pundits said, they all thought Apple was crazy to get into the retailing business.’”
