Touching the back wall of the Apple store

A few years back I went in to buy an Apple TV. Walked in, straight up to the Apple TV display, stood using it for a few mins, stood looking outwards towards the rest of the store, tried to make eye contact with any staff. No one paid any attention, staff happily chatting away to each other. I couldn't have looked more ready to buy without waving cash around.

Apple Store employees are definitely trained better than the average shop, but they are far from luxury.

The Apple TV at its most expensive is $150. I remember walking into high end stores like Burberry in my early twenties, seriously contemplating the cheapest items there and also being ignored except by security.

Some luxury brands will play hard to get, others will fawn over customers. Different people want different experiences. How expensive the item in the catalog might change the level of service, but the brand will use a similar playbook across the entire catalog.

This may be their thinking, but if so I feel that would be down to bad training.

In my experience the Apple TV skews hard towards those who have a lot of Apple products. It's priced far higher than the rest of that market. Most people buying an iPhone are buying a Fire stick or a cheap smart TV. I'd bet most people buying an Apple TV have an iPhone and a Mac.

It would be like going into a Burberry store and shopping for replacement buttons for your $3000 coat.

I wonder if they’d have acted any differently if you had actually waved cash around.

... or approached a human in a  logo'd uniform and say, "Hello person. Can you help me, please?"

You know, like our parents and grandparents would have done at a store. With humans who shouldn't be beckoned by glaring while standing near a display.

I'd also imagine that Apple TV is a great entry point—especially given the relatively cheap price—into the ecosystem. It's like the modern equivalent of the iPod.

Maybe I'm not American enough, but that experience sounds much more like luxury to me than having an employee bugging you to buy without you explicitly asking.

If your store requires keen customers to chase around after salespeople in order to buy something, it's doing something wrong.

For non-apple people:  is Private Use Area code point rendered as Apple logo on Apple devices.

Not at all. The only reason I ever go into an Apple Store is that I know I won’t get pressured to buy something. But I do replace my iPhone and my MacBook every few years, and on some level, the Apple Store being a relaxing environment to browse Apple products probably contributes to that. Apple isn’t trying to sell you a new laptop right here right now. They’re smarter than that.

I visited a Dior boutique in Tokyo (the one facing an LVMH store), put my greasy fingers on a glass guardrail, and within 10 seconds an employee came with a spray to clean it. I apologized, he apologized back.

Just to be clear, you never actually spoke to one of the staff and said you'd like to purchase something?

Actual luxury stores (like Dior or Vuitton) are absolutely profiling their visitors.

If you don't look like their typical customers (age, clothes, etc), you'll be mistreated or even sometimes kicked out as soon as you step in the store.

Apple’s logic is not to put pressure on prospective customers. That means that they don’t have a policy to talk to everyone who walks in the door looking around. I don’t like it either, its disquieting. But I respect their logic.

Really? Went in to Hermes store in Madrid and Dubai in shorts, t-shirt and slides, and I was treated with utmost respect. I was so under dressed in Madrid that my gf initially didn't want to accompany me.

I appreciate space when I go into a store when looking for something, but I also like having access to staff when needed without having to hunt them down. Unfortunately, most places like to go to one extreme or the other.

Oh, I have no problem with salespeople being hands off, that would be my preference too. But once you've made a decision to buy something, they should be available.

For something like an Apple TV, you can just walk up to the product, scan it with your phone, pay for it, and leave without any employee interaction. They're more interested in selling the things like iPhones, iPads, and Macs that require employee interaction.

Sounds like you dressed like a proper tourist.

I mean they are? It’s just that you might have to go and talk to one of the employees rather than waiting passively for them to come to you. I find it weird that people have an issue with that.

Many high-end stores will train their workers to not profile their visitors, because these days that lame-bro in the flip flops might be a crypto billionaire.

Plus it's just good practice. Your job as a salesperson in a high-end store is to educate and inform, not to sell. With that level of clientele they're looking to buy - if not now then later.

The only people who should be profiling customers are LPOs.

I did try, kinda hard when they're standing around chatting to each other. Also the idea of interrupting their conversation is something I'm too British to truly consider.

The store I was in didn't have much on shelving, mostly just cables and third party accessories. No Apple TVs. This may have changed recently though.

Well I was wearing a middle class attire, and so was my cousin who was guiding me into enemy territory. Back then he was LVMH's financial director in Asia.