Ron Johnson: Author of Shop Different
Episode 895
Retail is not dead. Bad retail is. ✨
On The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Ron Johnson, the creator of the Apple Store and author of Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius.
Ron worked directly with Steve Jobs and helped build one of the most successful retail concepts in history — not by making stores look cooler, but by rethinking what a store was actually for.
The Apple Store was not built to move boxes. It was built to teach, help, solve, connect, and build trust. The Genius Bar. Mobile checkout. Employees hired for curiosity, not pressure selling. All of it was designed around a simple but still radical idea: the customer relationship matters more than the transaction.
We talk about what most retailers still get wrong, why physical stores may become even more important in the age of AI, what he learned at Target bringing great design to more people, and what his very public J.C. Penney chapter taught him about timing, leadership, and change.
If you care about retail, leadership, innovation, customer experience, or building something that actually deserves people’s attention, this is a conversation worth hearing.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts. 🎧
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Transcript
Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up. That I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. We just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out. Knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go! Let’s go! Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin Show. What happens when everyone says physical retail is dying, and you remember building one of the most successful retail concepts in history? Today’s guest is Ron Johnson, the creator of the Apple Store and author of the incredible book that I got an early, early copy of called “Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius, and it is so, so good. Such a great story that I, as a huge admirer of Apple overall, had heard about Ron for for years, but actually didn’t know all the details of the incredible Apple Store and the Genius Bar and everything that comes with it. So Ron is one of the most influential retail leaders of our time. He’s worked directly with the Steve Jobs and served on Apple’s executive team and helped create retail experiences that change the way people think about stores, service, technology, and customer relationships. And before Apple, Ron was a merchant leader at another one of my favorite brands, Target, where he helped bring great design to a much broader audience, and later also served as CEO of J.C. Penney and founded an incredible company called Enjoy, the first mobile retail store. So I cannot wait to dig into this book, and I mean it very, very sincerely. It’s such a great read, so fun to kind of hear the backstory of something that, especially when you know something has been such a massive success, but why? And especially in a time when we’re all dealing with so much new out there, whether it’s AI or other, Ron is here to shed light on all of it. And thank you so much, Ron, for joining us today.
Ron Johnson 2:41
Well, Kara, the pleasure is mine. It’s nice to meet you, a fellow entrepreneur from the same neighborhood, and and I’m happy you read the book, and I’m happy you enjoyed it. That’s the most important thing.
Kara Goldin 2:53
I love it. So, Ron, how would you describe what you built with the Apple Store?
Ron Johnson 3:00
Well, you know, looking back now, it’s been 25 years since we opened our very first store. I guess what I admire most is that I go in the stores today, and I still visit stores all over the world, and it feels young and vibrant. It doesn’t feel like the store is aged, right? And so we were able to create something that’s timeless that has resonated with customers globally. No matter where you go, people feel like they belong to the Apple Store. There’s something different about the emotional experience of going to an Apple store than other stores, which tend to feel a little bit transactional, and people just love going to the stores. And to me, the real test of a retail store is that can it can it endure? Can it evolve? Can it stay current? Can it stay fresh? Because nobody likes a tired store, and the Apple stores have not only survived; they continue to thrive. And so, I know you brought with it. Yeah.
Kara Goldin 4:09
No, you should be very, very proud of it. How different are the Apple stores today versus when you launched them 25 years ago?
Ron Johnson 4:19
You know, when I look at them. I see the same thing. You know, they’re actually a lot nicer. You know, the early stores. You know, we we designed it in the warehouse. We had pretty pedestrian floors. You know, these wood floors that you’d find at the Gap. You know, done in a really apple way. Our lighting was actually quite industrial, very bright. You know, the concept of the store was just like today. You know, located in places where you live your life, great streets, great shopping malls. You come in, you can try every product before you buy, and the back half of the store was dedicated. Getting help whether you’re trying to learn something new, need help at the Genius Bar, you’re getting a new product set up, you know. So the concept’s the same. I think the design of the stores has gotten better because almost every store, after a number of years, you’re going to remodel it. So every store we opened back in 2000 to 2012, when I was there, has been refreshed, has been updated, and so they still look young, they look vibrant, but the experience is the same, and the reason for that is the the the approach to service has never wavered. Now, Apple from, and I think that’s because we got the approach right. Because when I worked with Steve, Steve was all about enriching people’s lives, changing people’s lives through products. He wanted to make things easy to use. He wanted you to get on the internet 123, He wanted you to be able to make movies like they made at Pixar, but have mere mortals be able to do that. So Apple’s design ethos was to make things easy, simple, and just work for customers. And the stores have honored that to this day. And you know, one of my most gratifying moments recently, I was in the south of France, and I had a problem with my Mac. And I went to the store and walked in, and had to turn it in, and they helped me, and I had to go back and pick it up. But during that short visit to the store, 15 separate employees approached me and said, “Ron, I met you before, and think about that. I left Apple in 2012, 15 years ago. That store opened in 2008, but it was people who had worked at different stores throughout Europe-someone from Geneva, someone from Covent Garden in London, someone from the Paris Opera store, many from the Nice store who are still there, but they’re still working at Apple Retail.
Kara Goldin 7:04
Yeah,
Ron Johnson 7:05
yeah. So retail stores have career employees, which you don’t find anywhere, but you stay where you work because you love what you get to do every day. And so we created a place employees love, customers love, and that’s what’s endured.
Kara Goldin 7:23
I remember you and I were talking before we hit record. I remember when the stores were coming out, and I had been a huge admirer of of Apple in general and Steve. But I remember thinking, okay, everyone wants to go online and buy computers, and he’s doing the opposite. He meaning Steve is really pushing the opposite message out there to consumers, like no, no, no, come into the stores at a time when people were saying no online shopping, as we used to call it, bod bodom, is catching up, and the internet, you know, all the speeds were catching up. That this is this is a dumb idea. But then the stores came, and what happened? Like, what? When did you know that it was going to be successful?
Ron Johnson 8:15
Well, I personally believed, and I’m optimist at heart. I believe the stores would be successful on launch day because I saw the connection we were able to create with employees and customers. I’ll never forget that first stores we opened two the same day, may 19, 2001. One in outside of D.c1. in Southern California, and we had 7000 people visit the store that day. Wow! And they just stayed in the store. They were on the computers. They were trying things. They were engaging with employees. They were belling out to the Genius Bar, and even though no one knew what they could do there, but people love to engage with the stores, and that was the thesis I had with Steve: is that the world’s going online, but if we’re going to make a store, we got to make it completely different, like something no one’s ever seen before, and it’s got to focus on engagement. When someone goes on Apple Store, we’re going to make them so clean, so uncluttered that you have nothing to do but put your hands on a product or talk to somebody, and that’s what they did. And and the stores, there’s these you and I would just every time I walk in the store, even if our volumes were a little below our plan, I would see customers and employees together in deep, enjoyable conversations, they’re smiling, they’re laughing, they’re learning, and as I watched that, I knew all it would take was time for someone either to buy a Mac, or I knew Apple’s roadmap. I knew the iPod. I knew where it was going. And I just figured that there’d be some point when the products were in such demand that the Apple Store become something extraordinary. So I saw it early, but I don’t think the world understood that till about 2004. And the first people to see it were the analysts. You know the analysts suck because they they start when the iPod went to Windows. They start counting the number of people waiting out of line to buy the thing, and they’re going, “What’s going on here? There’s huge demands, you know. And but we all knew in 2004 the stores were here for good because you know our volumes almost doubled that year. We were profitable. We were setting, you know, we were the most productive retail stores in the world, even back in 2004, doing more volume than per square foot than anybody, even like Tiffany or luxury brands. And so we knew the store was going to be good, but then it was continued to get better and better as Apple added more products because we only had Macs and iPods when they were their most productive stores in the world. Imagine when the phone came,
Kara Goldin 11:06
yeah,
Ron Johnson 11:07
then the iPad, and then the watch, and people, you know, even though Apple products are available every store in the world, it seems like Target, Walmart, Best Buy, Circuit City, on and on. You go, people still love to shop at the App Store.
Kara Goldin 11:23
Yeah, I I remember it was shortly after we launched Hint, and I knew somebody who was also working at Apple at the stores, and the biggest problem that everyone was talking about was the lines out the door. Everyone was talking about the lines, and so it wasn’t my idea. It was this individual’s idea at Apple, and they said, “Can you give us Apple Hint Water to give to a lot of the people out the doors? And so, so we did that, and it was huge. I mean, we got so much great customer feedback. You, Apple was able to keep people hydrated while they were standing in in the lines, and it it just kind of worked. It was it was a a lot of fun doing something like that. But I remember
Ron Johnson 12:10
Apple. Apple just does the right thing. Yeah, you know, like I remember when we opened our store in the Gens in Tokyo. Nobody people said no one in Japan is going to line up for a store opening, and we go to open our stores. And our Thanksgiving weekend, 2002, Stephen Loreen came, which was fun to celebrate Thanksgiving, and he used to love to go up to Kyoto. And but no one’s going to line up, and then our store is going to open, and there’s typhoon warnings. Yet the walk to the store was 10 train stops. We had lines you’d measure in miles, and they waited. But because the line was so long and the rain was coming, we had umbrellas for everybody, and we had employees walking out there giving umbrellas. You know, on a hot day, we give. They still give hint water. You know, Apple’s very conscious of what the customer needs, and and that’s a way of saying thank you to the people that came to wait in line because they’re your most loyal customers, the ones that want to be there on the opening for an event, a launch, or a store opening, because they can come back the next day and nobody will be there, but people wanted to be there at launch, which says something about the depth of customers’ love for Apple.
Kara Goldin 13:30
Yeah, definitely. I I know you talked in the book about, and I’ve heard you say that Apple stores were built to serve, not necessarily sell, but obviously you you did sell merchandise, a lot of merchandise. I
Ron Johnson 13:46
don’t agree with that. I don’t think we sold anything. Customers choose to buy. I mean, seriously, yeah. Customers chose to buy at our store. You know, we had a aversion to selling. You know, we said you know the customer will when they’re ready to buy, they’ll tell you I’m ready to buy, and so it would take four or five visits. But the idea is there’s no ask before it’s time. If you were to ask someone too early, would you buy a Mac? It might work some of the time, but some people will be very off-putting, and these are big expenses for people buying their first computer from Apple, and so we had an aversion to selling, and we had the patience to just end every conversation with, “Look forward to seeing you again. Come on back, and people did, you know. So customers really bought in the store. We-I don’t think it’s fair to say we really sold in the store. That’s
Kara Goldin 14:45
that’s fair. The
Ron Johnson 14:46
entire experience sold because you were buying into the idea. If I buy here, I can come back and get help at the Genius Bar and join one to one training programs, and so the concept of the store. I think sold product, but the customer bought into the idea of Apple and the Apple Store.
Kara Goldin 15:07
Can you share a behind-the-scenes Apple Store story that captures how differently Apple thought? Is there one region you spoke about? Japan.
Ron Johnson 15:18
Japan was great, but we had opened our store in New York, and Savo was our first flagship store, and we had taught the employees: no matter what the customer needs, find a way to solve it. And a woman walked in the store one day, and I I believe she was a PC user and her PC had died, and she was an author, like you’ve been, like I’m currently doing. She was writing a book, and she wanted to buy a Mac to do that, but they were expensive, you know, for her as an author. And our employees said, “Well, I’ve got a better idea. Why not, you know? Why don’t you just belly up to this Mac over here, and I’ll bring a stool down from the Genius Bar, and you can write your book here in the store. And she came back for every day for 30 days and wrote her book in the store. That’s pretty interesting, you know. And to me, that captures what the Apple Store is about. Whatever your need might be, we’re going to fix it. You know, in the early days of the phones, when like iPhone four, when the it was very prone to break, then we had advertised its real glass is going to be great, but people were cracking screens. We fixed them for free for nearly a year because what was broken was your trust in Apple. You know, you spent a lot of money in that phone and you accidentally slipped out of your hand, and it’s an accident. You know, a product ought to be able to stand an accident. You know, like that, and so until we were able to figure that out, you know, we fix loans for free. You know, so I think those are the kind of things that stand out to me. It’s, it’s the stories of how well we took care of customers.
Kara Goldin 17:15
So the Genius Bar, and I think you, if anyone’s listening and they don’t know what the Genius Bar is today. You have been hiding in a hole somewhere, but did the Genius Bar did it start out what it is today? Was that the dream, or did it sort of grow the plan for what it would be over time?
Ron Johnson 17:39
It grew over time, like most things, they start out slower than you anticipate. But the insight we had was the biggest thing we had to overcome was people’s fear of technology, and you know, because only half the people in the in America and probably less in the world owned a computer, a personal computer, when we launched stores. So our target market was the people who’ve never gotten over the hump to buy one. Yeah, we had to convince them why a Mac was right for them, but then we had to tell them we’d stand behind it. So a lot of companies would hide customer service; they’d put it in a room next door, they even lease a space next door, because they didn’t want someone buying to even think that they’d have a problem. But we said, let’s, if in doubt, stick it out. And we put the Genius Bar in the back of the stores, and we created a bar where we had the smartest people in town who would dispense advice for free. We would fix things in a day. Our goal was to repair a Mac and have it back the next day, and we did pretty good at that. And but the idea was to create a place that you could trust would be there for you when you had a problem. Early on, when we launched the service, we didn’t have enough customers. Apple had a really low market share, so most people walk in the store. One in 100 might use a Mac. They had no reason to go to the Genius Bar. Yeah, so the stores were busy. The front of the store is busy. People were almost treating the store like an internet cafe back then because you didn’t have a cell phone, and people charged for internet access at cafes. That was a big little business, and we had free internet, so the store was busy in the front. As time went on, people started to understand what the Genius Bar could do for you, and we had more and more customers. And then pretty soon, we couldn’t build the bars big enough. The last store we opened before I left in 2012. We had an entire floor in Hong Kong, overlooking Hong Kong Harbor, devoted to the Genius Bar. It had 100 stools, 100 places. Think about that. We had to staff to take care of 100 customers simultaneously. At the Genius Bar in Hong Kong, you know. So it over time, the Genius Bar became part of the culture of the store, the culture of America in many ways. And you’d see it popping up on sitcoms. You know, I was at the Genius Bar today, and you know, it somehow it became a pretty magical place. But it took time.
Kara Goldin 20:20
It’s interesting because when I think about the Apple stores back then, but also today, you create an environment that definitely brought new people in who had been unsure about how to buy, and so you gain the new consumers, but you didn’t make the existing consumers who loved Apple feel like they couldn’t come in, right? That it wasn’t a newbie. I’m not like them. And instead, they wanted to come in, right? They wanted to say maybe they wanted to even help the salespeople sell,
Ron Johnson 21:00
yeah,
Kara Goldin 21:00
you know, iPhone or computer. How do you do that, right? Like it’s just it’s a it was a whole new retail concept, but I got it. I I watched what you were doing, and I thought it was fascinating and innovative for sure. But how do you do that? How do you serve existing consumers, but
Ron Johnson 21:25
then also bring in the new consumers as you did, and make everyone feel like this is your place? Well, you know the way I’d answer that. It’s easy to design a store for an existing consumer. There. going to come to you no matter where you put the store. You know, typically people would put stores like that in low cost places because they’ll drive to it when I got to come. It’s harder to design a store to bring in someone new, right? So we had to think through everything we did. What’s the experience a new customer is going to have, and what’s the experience that an existing customer is going to have? Right, and we had to make them all feel welcome, and we did that through the people and the programming. So, for example, early on in the back of the store, we had a theater. It was meant to be like Mac World. If you’ve ever been to a Mac world, there’s the big stage where Steve would launch a product, but there are all these little stages where you demonstrate like iPhoto or iMovie or whatever’s new and incoming. And so we had a schedule of events, and there were events for first timers getting started with a Mac, and then we had events for Final Cut Pro, and so the people who were using their Mac for work would come in at certain times in the day, and they’d be with other Final Cut Pro people, and they felt like they were with their peers. Those classes were taught by very sophisticated trainers, while the getting started with the Mac was taught by someone who’s just a good teacher, because the audience knew so little and they had the patience to help people understand what’s a must. Do I have to look? Should I be looking on the floor? No, the mouse is what you hold when you interact with the computer. We had mice back on, you know, when we launched the store, the Mac had a mouse, right? But we had such a diversity of customers. But that’s what made the stores fun. We had a lot of early on complaints from some of the real sophisticated apps. Well, your employees don’t know anything. You know, I know more about the Mac than your employees, and they wanted expertise everywhere, but we couldn’t do that because then we wouldn’t have people who were great at welcoming the people who’d never bought a Mac before. You know, so we had diversity, really diverse personal geographies with all the employees in the store. Yeah,
Kara Goldin 24:00
I think it’s so interesting too that you know you mentioned that the stores don’t look too that much different versus how when you launch, and I think that that also speaks to that you were doing it right, right? The company was growing, people wanted more the existing consumer base, but you were still bringing in new consumers. When does a brand know that they need to bring in new consumers, especially if they’re growing their existing consumer base? When
Ron Johnson 24:32
you know it is when you do something great, really significant, and it doesn’t move the needle on your volume or your market share. It’d be like if you launched a new bottle of flavored water, and you knew it was the best in the world, and your sales didn’t go up. And that’s what happened to Apple when Steve returned. So for those who know Apple well, you know Steve founded the company of. Was he left? He was replaced by someone. They brought him back in 1997, really to save the company. And he did a lot of things initially to help save the company, but the big one is they launched a great product, the iMac. You remember that it was a cult hit. It was on the cover of Time magazine. It used beautiful plastics and colored plastics, and it changed the whole idea of what a computer was. It got all the attention in the world, but it only sold to the Mac install base. After about a year, Apple was in the same place. Windows had won. Windows had 95% share. The Mac wasn’t growing, and that’s when Steve knew that if he was going to win, he had to control the customer experience. He had to improve the channel, and that was really Apple’s weak point as a company. It had great marketing, great hardware, great software. Its go-to-market was terrible. Best Buy wouldn’t carry the Mac back then. It was too low volume for Best Buy. They only carried these. Circuit City didn’t carry the Mac. We were carried mainly in these, you know, mom and pop resellers. There were these small little stores that weren’t a great shopping experience, and Steve knew that where the world was going, he had to open his own stores, in spite of the internet. As you started talking about, where people said, “Why would you do this? The world’s going online; stores won’t exist. But Steve knew he had to be face to face with customers to win, and that was the right instinct.
Kara Goldin 26:47
Yeah, definitely.
Ron Johnson 26:49
It’s hard to imagine like the iPhone when that iPhone came out. It was so fun to see customer after customer for the first time touch a screen and impact it. Just the touch response. It it was like a moment you never forget. That first time you interacted with the iPhone, you know, and you know, so that if you didn’t have stores, how would would the iPhone have taken off like it did? You know, we had so many stores when the iPhone launch, we were within seven miles of 80% of the U.S. population, the U.K. population, the Japanese population. So we could really get people, and they wanted to see that product. They had heard about it, and they wanted to try it, and they lined up to do that, and they bought it, and that kick started the thing. When the iMac launched, you’d go in a store; they were in boxes, and they were beautiful boxes, but they weren’t out there to try. No one had them loaded with software. It was just a pretty looking thing, yeah. But with the Apple Store, you could try everything, and and so the stores, you know, had a real positive impact for Apple as we launched all those new products in the first decade at the stores. It impacted the iPod, the obviously the iPhone, the iPad. All those products were things you had to try to understand. Today, you know, you can order online because you kind of know what the experience of working with an all-string device is. back then, you didn’t.
Kara Goldin 28:25
Yeah, no, it’s so so true. So today we are you you can not get through your day without hearing about AI and or people call it Chat GPT or however you want to refer to it as. But in the age of AI and online shopping, you are sitting back in your chair now and and looking at it, and I’m sure have many many thoughts. But why might physical retail become even more important today, knowing what you know?
Ron Johnson 28:55
Yeah, my instinct is AI is gonna, and it already is. It’s gonna greatly improve the online shopping experience. So instead of having going through all these tiles and click, click, click, click, click and try to find someone to buy, we’ll be able to have a conversation with an agent that’s tailored to that website that will take us through finding the right product. So online will improve, the stores will improve as they implement AI and they already are in a variety of ways, but it’s not going to change where we shop. It’ll change how we shop, and I say that with great confidence because we are now 30 years in the U.S. after online shopping started. Each of us shops every week. We’ve reached our conclusions. What things do I go to the store for? What things do I go to Amazon for? When do I go online? And over the 30 years that customers voted, what they want is an omni-channel experience. They want to work with a brand where they can go online, and sometimes they’ll buy online. Sometimes they’ll go to a store. They’d love to buy online and pick up in store if they’re in a hurry, you know. So the debate over online shopping and physical shopping is largely over. And if you look at it, 30% of all products are bought online, which means the market share between online and retail has changed a point every year. But for the last two years, it’s been pretty static. You know, stores are actually growing a little bit faster than online for most retailers. You know, and so the world’s changed. And why is that? Well, because we’re kind of getting tired. We’re getting over. We’re tired of spending too much time on screens, especially young kids. You know, the younger you are, the less time you want to spend on screens, and you’re trying to connect more. You see that if you have, I have young kids in New York. They’re all in running clubs. You know, everyone’s trying to connect, and so I think what AI is going to do is going to let us get to the general knowledge we need much faster, like shopping, which I can do online. But then I’ll have more time to go connect, and connect connection is what is really convenience at its core. If you look at the root word of convenience, what’s the word? To convene. So somehow we were over years we’ve misunderstood what convenience really is. It’s not just efficiency; it’s the ease of connecting with people. Yeah, and that’s what’s going to happen, I think, as we go forward. And so, where I live, you know, you know, in Menlo Park, Atherton, Palo Alto, one of the hardest parking places is Stanford Chocolate Center. Well, that’s within two miles of where the VCs and private equity firms for 30 years have been trying to put stores out of business. Yet they thrive in the heart of that world. These are the most online people in the world, the most digital savvy, the most incoming people. Yet, Stanford Shopping Center was one of the most productive centers in the world, and the hardest parking place in the valley. So, if retail can survive in the heart of the technology world, imagine how much better we’ll do everywhere else. You know, so stores are here for good. It’s kind of what we do. Online’s here for good. AI is going to make it better. I don’t think it’s going to change where we shop. It’ll just change the experience we get shopping.
Kara Goldin 32:57
I totally agree. So we have so so many things that you talked about in the book. Your experience with Target and J.C. Penney as well. When you think about the biggest lessons, if you had a couple of major lessons from Shop Different that founders and CEOs should take away, what would you say about building out brands?
Ron Johnson 33:23
I would say two or three things. Number one, don’t be in a hurry. No matter what we do, we always feel we’re in a hurry. Things take time to build, but I I go back to you know I had the the privilege of working side by side with Steve Jobs for 12 years, yeah. Unfortunately, he left us way too soon. But look what he accomplished in his lifetime. You know, he invented the PC, right? He invented the digital movie, right? He saved Apple. He brought us the modern smartphone. Everything, but Steve was never in a hurry. You know, Steve said, “When you do one product well, you earn the right to do another. And I remember he with movies. You know, people said, “Why don’t you do two Pixar movies a year? They’re doing so well. Every other studio releases multiple movies. He goes, “I can only do one a year well. So the first five to seven years, Pixar launched one movie a year, but they were all great. You know, Apple did very few products in its time. You know, we finally did a non PC, and that was the iPod. But the phone didn’t come out till six years after the iPod launched, because it took time to make that a great product, you know. And Steve and the team worked on that phone for at least three years, and some of Apple wondered if it ever come out, you know, and. But Steve was never in a hurry. He wasn’t in a hurry in a meeting. He would stay with the group until they got to the right answer. He was always available when I needed to talk to him. If I called or he called me every day, it seemed like for a good number of years. Steve was in a hurry, so don’t be in a hurry. Just be in a hurry to do great work. You know that’d be my my first, you know, bit of advice. And similar to that, I really believe that everyone, all the great things, come out of someone’s imagination or their inner voice. You’re not gonna win in business by copying something that’s been done before. You improve when you copy, and it’s good to pay attention to your competitors and steal their best ideas. That lets you improve. That’s what it takes to compete. To win, you have to do something that’s never been done before. You know, you did that with your water. You know, when you launched that, you were one of the first to do flavored water
Kara Goldin 36:17
or unsweetened flavored water.
Ron Johnson 36:19
Right, sweetened flavored water. But the point is, you did something that hadn’t been done before, and that’s what it takes. And things that haven’t been done before are always the combination of some group of people, rarely an individual, who are in conversation trying to solve a really important need, and aha, they come up with something unique. I had a few of those moments in my life doing design at Target. You know, good design doesn’t have to be expensive. That was very different when we did that. You know, the Apple Store is very different. The Genius Bar is a way to serve people. These were things that had never been done before, but there’s they’re the kind of things that endure. They’re the kind of things that break through the clutter. And so, I think you have to really have confidence in your imagination. And then, when you launch something, you got to will it to success. Very few things are overnight.
Ron Johnson 37:15
If you believe in something to your core, keep working at it until you get it right, you know. Those are a couple bits or bits. Yeah.
Kara Goldin 37:24
How long did it take you from the time that you were incubating this idea of the Apple stores to actual launch?
Ron Johnson 37:33
18 months.
Kara Goldin 37:34
18 months.
Ron Johnson 37:35
18 months. Yeah. We spent from I started in January. We opened in. I guess 17 months. Um, it was the end of May, so it’s probably 18 months, which is time. Yeah,
Kara Goldin 37:47
yeah, definitely. Ron, thank you so much for joining me today. The book is called Shop Different. Comes out in mid September. The exact date, Ron,
Ron Johnson 38:00
is september 22.
Kara Goldin 38:02
Woohoo! So shop different, get your copy. I love this conversation. Love the book. It’s going to make you want to go to an Apple store even more and and kind of live the experience even more. So so so good. Thank you, Ron, for all your wisdom and for really all of these incredible experiences that you’ve brought to life for not only me but also consumers, so it was so great to get to know you a little more.
Ron Johnson 38:31
Well, you’re way too kind, and I appreciate our chance to spend time together.
Kara Goldin 38:35
Thank you again. Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin Show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint: We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.
