Apple’s got more than 200 retail stores worldwide now, and those stores are usually crowded with people checking out iPads, iPhones and MacBooks. Most of all, people who go to the Apple Store sometimes just want the customer care and experience granted by the super-trained Apple employees – this is true in the US, Europe, China, everywhere.
Yet, even a tech giant like Apple started small and iterated from there. The first Apple Store, opened in May 19, 2001 in the 30-year old Glendale Galleria in California has become a cult destination for Apple fans (or, “Appleheads”) in the United States, Reuters reports.
The Store, which according to many is located in a not-so-cool old mall that’s not really the ideal Apple shiny building, still manages to bring some good customer traffic thanks to the nearby Los Angeles freeways. The real traffic, though, comes from regular people heading to the Store to buy new gadgets and die-hard fans visiting it to snap a picture or talk to the employees working in the Store “001”. Some Apple fans go to the Glendale Galleria Store as if it was their Mecca, hoping to meet a nostalgic Steve Jobs in there eating apples with the fellow employees. Or something.
There’s also a number of Appleheads, as Reuters calls them, who believe the employees working at Store 001 are far more trained and specialized than “regular employees”, although we wouldn’t bet our Apple t-shirts on this story. Another store in the Tyson Corner Mall in McClean, VA, actually opened the same day in 2001, but that one didn’t get the “001” indicator from Apple. We guess that one hasn’t become a cult destination.
Apple Stores have become part of our daily lives, a place to visit with our families and friends to check on the latest products from Apple and play around with them. It’s pretty cool, though, that in the fast-moving world of consumer products an Apple Store can become a cult.
