Bite the Apple

“It's not just a computer store,” Public Rela-tions Senior Manager Takashi Takebayashi assures, as the crowd moves through the second floor of the Apple Store, Shinsaibashi. “It's more than just a place to buy a computer. I think we're providing customers with a completely new experience, a place where they can feel comfortable — I think it's kind of like a theme park.”

Pretty audacious, even as far as PR hyper-bole goes, though the heavy crowd wandering the floor seems wont to agree. Children test games and bounce on oversized spherical chairs in the Kids' Corner as a couple tests out digital cameras in the peripherals section as a workshop winds down in the 25-seat theater area. To the right, students ascend a twisty, laminated-glass staircase as custo-mers belly up the Genius Bar (more on that later) at the rear of the floor.

Opening August 28, the Apple Store, Shinsaibashi saw some 2,500 people pass through its doors on the first day and generated a line that stretched through Amerika-mura to the edges of the Hanshin highway. (Reports vary, but the very first person in line is considered to be graphic designer Youichi Nishida, said to have staked out a spot by the entrance at 5:40am the previous morning. Hardcore.) It may not be a theme park, but it does a pretty good impression of one.

“I don't deny Yodobashi Camera and Sofmap their way of selling [computer products] — it's great, it works for them — but I think we provide our customers with more,” Takebayashi continues. “The atmosphere here is different.”

“Atmosphere,” of course, may be at least partly responsible for the booming success of the not-just-computer-stores Apple computer stores in the States (over 80 at last count), Tokyo, Osaka and the upcoming '05 branch in Nagoya. The places just feel different — more, say, your modernist uncle's cool downtown bachelor pad than the fluorescent-hued, barely-contained street riot that is Umeda's Yodobashi Camera. The interiors of the Apple stores — from ideas from a Berkeley archi-tectural firm as well as company guru Steve Jobs — are a mélange of brushed metallic surfaces, unvarnished wooden tables and a smattering of product set-ups placed within easy reach. Want to see what all the iPod fuss is about? Now is your chance — the stores practically beg you to play with the ones on display.

“This is a shop designed so people can see products, try them out, stop by to visit on the way to work in the mornings or on their way back home at night,” store manager Masaru Ichinosawa offers. “It's a very easy, easy place to visit.”

As any Mac fan will more than happily tell you, ease of use and customer-friendly products are Apple's raison d'etre, a philo-sophy perhaps echoed by the store design in general and by the Genius Bar in specific.

A standard Apple Store feature, the GB is where customers can ask for and receive solutions to computer problems from an array of foreign and Japanese Mac “geniuses”. (“Almost 100% of the questions, the Geniuses can answer without having to call anyone else,” Takebayashi boasts. “They're really the Top Gun of Apple store staff.”) Best of all, it (as well as the hourly Mac workshops in the theater area) is completely free — unless, of course, you're actually bringing in a system for repair. “We aim for zero wait-time,” Takebayashi says. “It gets much busier on weekends, but we still try to get customers talking to someone very quickly.”

Retail lore is full, of course, of stories about shops so cool that no customers ever felt compelled to actually buy anything, though throngs of Osakans were strolling the store, iPod boxes in hand, one recent Monday afternoon. For her part, store administrator Naoko Yamaoka admits she “wasn't really good at computers” in the very beginning. “But,” she continues, “I was always really curious about the design aspects of Apple, and why people are such big fans of the brand.

“And these stores,” Yamaoko adds, gazing around, “these stores are really, really amazing. Now, I wanna buy tons of stuff.”

Text: Jeff Lo • Photos: Apple Store Shinsaibashi