Back in 2001, Apple launched something new that would be ubiquitous in American life and would inspire several other tech companies to follow suit.
But it wasn't a revolutionary new gadget that signified you were on the cutting edge of technology — it was a retail store inside a mall in suburban America.
Apple's first two physical retail locations opened in May 2001 in McLean, Virginia, and Glendale, California. Then-CEO Steve Jobs announced that the stores would be the first of 25 the company planned to open in 2001 as a way for Apple customers to "learn and experience the things they can actually do with a computer, like make movies, burn custom music CDs, and publish their digital photos on a personal website."
But the Apple retail experience has evolved significantly over the past 19 years. Gone are the curved tables, colorful carpets, and Genius Bar. In their place are long wooden tables chosen by former design chief Jony Ive and roving employees who can take you through the checkout process using just their iPhone.
Here's what Apple stores looked like when they first opened compared to how they look today.
Apple opened its first two stores — Apple Tysons Corner and Apple Glendale Galleria — on May 19, 2001. Apple said that more than 7,700 people visited the two stores during their opening weekend and Apple saw nearly $600,000 in combined sales in the two-day span.
Reuters Photographer
The Tysons Corner store opened first, at 10 a.m. that Saturday. But fans were lined up around the block at 4 a.m. that morning — at the time, it was described as "a scene from a rock concert."
The first Apple store at Tysons Corner mall in McLean, Virginia, pictured in 2011. Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post via Getty Images
When Apple unveiled the first store in Tysons, Jobs and other Apple executives, including Tim Cook, were on hand to show off the space and highlight features like the Genius Bar, a space inside the Apple store where customers could ask questions and get tech support.
From left: Apple Senior V.P. Retail Ron Johnson, Senior VP of Operations Tim Cook, CEO Steve Jobs, and CFO Fred Anderson at Apple’s first retail store in McLean, Virginia on May 15, 2001. Win McNamee/Reuters
These days, Apple has done away with the dedicated Genius Bar in favor of having roving employees to help with technical issues ...
By PYMNTS - Posted on
As 2020 unfolds, the retail business has been dramatically altered. Macy’s started the year by laying off employees and closing stores. Simon Properties led a team of investors to essentially buy out one of its tenants, Forever 21. And the supermarket business has thinned its ranks, with several organic food players going out and Amazon coming in.
But with consumer spending holding steady, it’s important for retailers to grasp the opportunity to create innovative ways to get, keep and grow customers. One of the most commonly talked-about and executed strategies in the 2020 connected commerce world is experiential marketing. For retailers, it can be as simple as an in-store event or a high-profile design that consumers will travel to visit. But experiential marketing is also a customer-centric strategy intended to drive customer retention and strengthen the bond between retailer and consumer.
According to a recent report from Forrester and Adobe, brands defined as “experience-driven” grow at a clip of 19 percent per year, compared to 13 percent for others. And retailers that deploy experiential tactics drive repeat purchases at rates nearly twice those who don’t. Says the report: “Combined with the increased ease of online shopping and rapid growth of alternative, in-home and mobile entertainment options, it is absolutely critical that retailers and retail center owners continuously evaluate how to stand out and drive consumers to their centers. Today’s consumers desire more than simply goods, as experiences, and the memories and bragging rights that come with them – as well as content for their Instagram feed – are just as important.”
So, what constitutes experiential marketing for retailers? Wine and cheese for the shoppers? Golf games at the mall? Pop-up stores? All of the above, actually, but it’s not as easy as it sounds. The version that works the best shows the two-way, strategic nature of the discipline. Says a recent report from George Johnson, an agency specializing in experiential marketing, its purpose is to “give audiences easy and inviting access to the level of content that interests them, information is tiered and presented in hybrid formats. Dimensional, human-scaled assets attract attention, grabbing eyes and inviting exploration through physical interaction. The physical actions activate digital experiences, which draw participants deeper into individualized levels of content satisfying to them.”
This definition takes experiential marketing beyond the wine-and-cheese concept. A good example of the “human-scaled” experience can be seen at Yankee Candle. It banked its past retail strategy on the product itself, which appealed to the aroma of the candles and the homey quality of its stores. Now, in the era of experiential marketing, a consumer can go to Yankee Candle, pick a scent (say, Balsam Fir) and then use an app right in the store to send a photo to a store associate. Minutes later, that photo is applied as a label. The consumer now has a candle with a personal brand. Yankee Candle gets data, engagement and a satisfied customer. The consumer doesn’t just buy a candle – she has an experience that extends well beyond the purchase. And so does the recipient.
Like anything else worth doing in retail technology and the customer experience, experiential marketing must be measurable. For example, high-end home goods and hardware chain Anthropologie is known for its innovation and creativity in experiential marketing, including an installation at its new store in Barcelona that recruited local artists to design their windows and in-store sculptures. It ran a fashion show at 25 stores in March 2019.
According to Jessica McGuinn, experiential marketing manager for Anthropologie, the fashion show was all about data. For every store and event, emails were sent to customers inviting them to the show. Those open rates were monitored and the positive RSVPs were encouraged to make a purchase during the event. The activity at the event itself was also measured. The results from all Anthropologie events in 2019 attracted more than 6,300 attendee check-ins at 665 events. During the period between September and November 2019, Anthropologie added more than 3,000 customers to its database. Attendees also had an opportunity to join the company’s loyalty program.
Macy’s is doubling down on experiential stores as part of its comeback plan for the year. It recently opened the first Market by Macy’s, a new retail concept in Southlake, Indiana. Rather than the 100,000-square-foot-plus space that Macy’s has typically used to anchor malls, the Southlake store is 20,000 square feet and located in the Southlake Town Square, a smaller shopping center. It has a more limited selection than the bigger stores, but is more personal and agile for the consumer looking for an experience while shopping.
“The purpose of the format is three things: discovery, community and convenience,” said Rachel Shechtman, Macy’s chief brand experience officer. “About a year ago, we started talking about creating a brick-and-mortar model that would stay relevant 10 years from now. Physical spaces need to provide a value that you can’t get from your couch.”
Other immersive experiences show the need to give consumers something to do and see to get them to come back again. The Woolrich flagship store in New York City is a tribute to the history of the brand, and has been called more of a museum than a store. Other companies focus on activities that stay on brand. The Lululemon store in Chicago offers food, events, meditation sessions and fitness classes. And the Hipanda apparel brand flagship in Tokyo has created a “technology nirvana” for its customers.
As described in Frame magazine: “For starters, the search starts the minute customers point to the façade with their phones, as the furious bear jumps out at them, bursting through a splash of mercury-like confetti. Then, by way of both digital and analog interactions – the former mostly AR, the latter mostly light-based – the host’s presence is revealed among the T-shirts and hoodies on the racks and hangers, which move to the beat of his supposed steps. In another room, a sea of bouncing balls jump through the handheld device, until the sullen host materializes inside a foggy chamber. Think of it as trying to catch an adorably scary Pokemon inside a mysteriously lit, minimalist haunted mansion.”
But retailers don’t have to go that far. They can just give consumers a reason to experience the brand while they shop, and give them something to do that will resonate. According to Joe Pine, who literally wrote the book on The Experience Economy: “While prior economic offerings – commodities, goods and services – are external to the buyer, experiences are inherently personal, existing only in the mind of an individual who has been engaged on an emotional, physical, intellectual or even spiritual level. Thus, no two people can have the same experience, because each experience derives from the interaction between the staged event (like a theatrical play) and the individual’s state of mind.” (READ MORE)
Debroop Roy - ENTREPRENEUR STAFF Correspondent - February 19, 2020
Unacademy, an edtech start-up that helps students prepare for different competitive exams, has raised $110 million in a Series E round led by General Atlantic, Sequoia and Facebook. Existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Steadview Capital as well as Blume Ventures also participated in the latest funding.
Founded in 2015, Bengaluru-based Unacademy started as an YouTube channel before launching its own platform and a mobile app. The platform currently has more than 1 million videos from over 10,000 educators across the country. Its app now has over 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store.
The company said it will use the new funds to penetrate deeper into the test preparation categories, launch new categories and bring top educators on board.
This round also saw an exit for some angel investors, the company said in a statement.
Staggering Growth
Unacademy is one of the fastest growing start-ups in what has become a highly competitive space with Byju's having hogged plenty of limelight with its Unicorn status.
Earlier this month, Unacademy co-founder and chief executive officer Gaurav Munjal tweeted that the company's subscription service, which offers learners access to live classes, had crossed $30 million in annual recurring revenue within a year of launch. It now has more than 90,000 active subscribers and 70 per cent of its users are from tier-II and tier-III cities.
"Our goal is to democratise education and become not just the largest educational organisation but the largest consumer internet story out of India," Munjal said.
Unacademy has also had a fairly popular marketing campaign 'Let's Crack It' in the last few months, with an eponymous anthem that was sung by popular rapper Naezy doing the rounds on social media.
Facebook's Investment
Mark Zuckerberg-led Facebook, which has steadily pressed its foot on the pedal when it comes to interests in India, had last year invested in social commerce platform Meesho's $125 million funding round.
"Facebook is an ally for India's economic growth and social development, and we are excited about India and it’s rapidly rising Internet ecosystem," said Ajit Mohan, vice president and managing director at Facebook India.
On the investment in Unacademy, he said, "we are reinforcing our commitment to the Indian startup ecosystem as well as investing in a company that is transforming learning in India."
Last year in September, Mohan, speaking at an event in Kerala, had said that the Menlo Park, California-based company would be making substantial investments in technology start-ups in India. (READ MORE)
By Jessica Thomas, ENTREPRENEUR STAFF - Digital Content Director
February 18, 2020
After an entrepreneur comes up with a business idea, one of their first tasks is to figure out a logo and how they want their brand to look. And because many entrepreneurs lack design skills, they often turn to platforms with template designs like Canva or PicMonkey, or to companies like 99Designs and Design Contest — which connect new businesses with freelance designers who enter “contests” in the hope of landing new clients.
Because 99Designs has so much insight into young companies in the process of creating logos and building brands, they have a bird’s eye view on what industries will likely grow in the coming years. They share these insights in an annual list on high-growth startup industries.
The company bases the results on the number of contests and projects being generated on its platform by businesses in each sector, compared year-over-year and to the previous five years. The data-based results give some interesting insights into what businesses could become a larger part of the cultural conversation in the coming year. The 2018 study, for example, predicted cryptocurrency, cannabis, non-traditional travel (like boutique hotels and Airbnbs) and virtual reality companies would likely see high growth that year.
In 2020, it predicts the high-growth industries will be as follows:
With the explosion of CBD-related companies, it’s no surprise the growing green industry made the list. “Bio-hacking” sounds intimidating, but it actually refers to the growing practice of making small lifestyle changes as a way to scientifically change your body. Intermittent fasting is probably the best known example of bio-hacking, but it also includes things like drinking bulletproof coffee and tracking your sleep cycles with wearable technology. The appetite for optimizing our time, energy and diet isn’t likely to go anywhere, so that prediction is on point.
Rounding out the list are businesses related to astrology and veganism. With the rapid growth of companies like Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat — and the larger cultural conversation around climate change and the impact of eating meat — it’s safe to assume more people will turn to a plant-based or vegan lifestyle. The biggest surprise on this list is the cascade of astrology-related businesses. Once considered a niche industry, it’s become more common to see articles about How To Better Communicate With Your Coworkers, According To Your Zodiac Sign or how to Understand Your Boss by Astrology Sign.
Though it remains to be seen if these industries will explode like 99Designs predicts, chances are they’ll be right on the money. (READ MORE)
Kolkata: E-commerce major Flipkart is contemplating to go for partnership with local stores offering its customers a "touch and feel" experience, at least for some products, as online commerce continues to be minuscule in the overall Indian retail industry.The move comes close on the heels of Reliance planning grocery foray taking local kirana stores onboard.
Walmart-owned Flipkart has already established a delivery model using local kirana stores and onboarded some27,000 stores across 700 cities.
Now, Flipkart proposes to have authorised "buy zones"where a customer can walk in and check a product but he or she has to order it online, a company official said on Thursday.
"Our pilot project was successful in Hyderabad withmobiles where we partnered with local kirana stores for a touch and feel experience. But the order has to be taken online from a kiosk installed there," Flipkart chief corporate affairs officer Rajneesh Kumar said.
Now, the e-commerce major plans to expand this localised partnerships in other parts of the country, he said.
Flipkart and Amazon now faces the heat of the Competition Commission of India's probe against them for alleged malpractices including deep discounting and tie-up with preferred sellers.
"Online market accounts for only 3 per cent of the total retail market in the country," Kumar said.
In fashion, tie-ups with local tailors had offered huge benefit to e-commerce company in a sharp reduction in the number of returns.
In the mobile category, pure online brands had moved to offline brick and mortar stores to expand its base and protect their margins.
On Thursday, Flipkart organised a workshop for MSMEs in Kolkata, a part of a series of programmes to help the enterprises leverage e-commerce to grow their business.
Kumar said the move will help deepen base of products on the marketplace platform. (READ MORE)
Transparent Financial Systems, a Seattle-based startup building cryptographic settlement technology has come out of stealth mode after raising more than $14 million in a Series A round led by Patnera Capital and joined by Square.
FuturePerfect Ventures, Ideo Colab Ventures, Digital Currency Group, and CMT Digital also joined the round, which follows an $8 million seed financing from Vulcan Capital in 2018.
Transparent Systems began at Vulcan in early 2018 at the direction of the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, along with Shawn Johnson, the former chairman of the investment committee of State Street Global Advisors.
It was spun out later that year, working to build seamless on-demand 24/7 settlement solutions, using cryptographically-secured distributed networks to reduce the friction in making and receiving payments.
The startup is already concluding its beta programme with a group of unnamed financial services firms and fintech firms in the US, demonstrating on-demand settlement of USD between multiple participants.
It says it is on track to open up its network for evaluation, testing, and initial commercial use in 2020 and will use the new funding to accelerate product development, engineering and overseas expansion.
“Square believes that blockchain represents a path towards a more robust, safe, and empowering future for all participants in the economy - from individuals to businesses,” says Mike Brock, strategic development, Cash App at Square. “We are excited to work with Transparent Systems to bring that vision to the financial system.” (READ MORE)
PredictHQ, a company that aggregates data sets from myriad events and public holidays to help companies forecast demand for their services, has raised $22 million in a series B round of funding led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with participation from Lightspeed Venture Partners, Aspect Ventures, and Rampersand VC.
The San Francisco-based startup taps myriad sources for data related to concerts, sports, public holidays, and more and then adds in proprietary and “hard to find” data. It throws all of this into a big melting pot, channels it into an API, and licenses it to companies like Uber, Domino’s, Quantas, and Booking.com.
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So why is this data so useful? Well, it all comes down to predictive insights — knowing how much demand a service is likely to see. During a major music festival or sports event, for example, Uber often employs surge pricing, a mechanism to manage supply (and make more money) when demand is high. But surge pricing often kicks in with little to no warning, as the pricing mechanism simply reacts to a surge in demand. Knowing when to expect a spike in ride requests could help Uber alert drivers to be at a location at a certain time.
PredictHQ’s secret sauce is the way it combines data. For example, knowing there’s a rock concert on a specific date in San Diego is useful, but adding in the fact that the American Society of Hematology is holding an exposition in the same area on the same day might suggest an even greater demand for rides. Moreover, Uber could tap other independent data sources — including hyper local weather forecasts — to fill in the picture. If a torrential downpour is anticipated as the two major events are about to finish, for example, drivers can be standing by to cash in.
Similarly, by using PredictHQ’s data Domino’s can garner greater insights into how many delivery drivers might be needed on a specific evening, or whether a location might need to order more ingredients.
Ultimately, PredictHQ is all about helping businesses cut down on losses by adapting their supply and pricing to suit demand.
Above: PredictHQ on a laptop
Image Credit: PredictHQ
The story so far
Founded out of Auckland, New Zealand in 2015, PredictHQ exited stealth three years later with $10 million in funding. That same year, its global headquarters moved to San Francisco, along with CEO and cofounder Campbell Brown. With another $22 million in the bank, the company said it’s now well positioned to grow its data science team and bring its demand intelligence platform to more industries and markets.
“This funding will be used to grow the team, especially our data scientists, who now make up about half of our team,” Campbell told VentureBeat. “We are focused on our correlation and prediction engine that will turn months of complicated data science work into a few hours for our customers.”
Back in September, PredictHQ launched its first industry-specific product, called aviation rank, which is designed for airlines. Aviation rank uses machine learning models to forecast which global events are likely to impact the demand for flight bookings — anything from Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany to the World Dairy Expo in Madison, Wisconsin. A specific product is required for the airline industry because some events are more likely to attract inbound air traffic than others. A major music festival or technology conference will likely draw people from far and wide, whereas a local standup comedy gig probably won’t. By tailoring its product to niche markets, PredictHQ widens its appeal.
Above: High-impact events as shown in PredictHQ’s aviation rank
According to Brown, the company will be working on similar product niches in the future, but for now it’s more focused on developing its main product.
“Aviation rank has performed really well for us, snagging us a series of leading airline customers,” Brown said. “But the opportunity in front of us is vast, so we are focused on sequencing our investment into our core product and knowledge graph to generate even greater relevance. This creates value for all of our customers and target industries. We will be working on industry-relevant products in the future, but we prioritized aviation rank early because airlines have very specific requirements.”
Big data is the driving force behind countless digital services, informing life insurance policies, insights into cities, and public transport decisions. Pittsburgh-based Gridwise, for example, targets ride-hailing drivers directly via a dedicated mobile app that uses big data and real-time alerts to inform them about potential ways to increase their earnings.
Whatever the industry, it’s clear there’s a growing demand for big data insights that help companies adapt to shifting consumer demand.
“In today’s hyper-connected world, it just doesn’t make sense for businesses to miss out on factoring the significant impact of real-world events into their forecasting, pricing, planning, and other business optimization strategies,” Brown said. (READ MORE)
Wells Fargo has invested $5 million into U.K. start-up Elliptic, which helps banks manage the risks associated with being exposed to cryptocurrencies.
The London-based firm has become known for its analysis tools, which it sells to some of the world’s largest cryptocurrency platforms — including Binance and Circle — to help them find and block illicit digital currency transactions.
For instance, the company’s technology was able to uncover a terrorist group using bitcoin to finance its operations by tracking suspicious transactions on the cryptocurrency’s digital ledger known as the blockchain. It then flagged this to its clients so they could cut off the funds.
But the firm, founded in 2013, has been increasingly working with financial institutions to get them on board with its so-called Discovery platform, which helps banks identify whether clients’ funds are passing through cryptocurrency platforms without the appropriate compliance checks in place.
“If they see payments going between their customers and one of a long list of crypto entities, they can understand more about who that entity is and whether it’s something they should be concerned about,” Elliptic co-founder and CEO James Smith told CNBC in an interview.
The aim of Discovery is to give banks a sense of their exposure to crypto-assets through their customers’ transactions and identify whether there are any money laundering risks.
The investment into Elliptic from Wells Fargo’s venture unit, Wells Fargo Strategic Capital, is an extension of the start-up’s $23 million Series B funding round announced in September. The additional investment brings the company’s total money raised to over $40 million. Elliptic didn’t disclose its valuation.
Smith said the fact that Wells Fargo was backing the company shows banks are “interested in how we can help them understand and manage risk that relates to crypto.”
“More and more financial institutions realize even if they don’t touch crypto themselves, they are adjacent to crypto. They are exposed to crypto risk and have a responsibility to understand what the risk is and how to manage it.”
He said it also reflects an improving regulatory environment for cryptocurrencies, citing legislation such as newly introduced anti-money laundering rules from the European Union. He also highlighted a regulatory framework from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) that includes crypto assets. The FATF is an intergovernmental organization tackling dirty money.
Elliptic managed to bag Wells Fargo as an investor after building a “relationship” with the U.S. bank, Smith said. The focus of the fresh capital will be to invest in Elliptic’s Discovery product and help it expand geographically, with a particular focus on Asia. Countries like Japan and Singapore have shown considerable growth with regard to digital currencies, Smith added.
Big banks have been hesitant to explore cryptocurrencies in the past, not least due to their notoriety for huge price volatility and instances of them being associated with money laundering and fraud. But optimists like Elliptic’s chief executive think this could be starting to change.
“It’s no longer OK for a bank to stick their head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist,” Smith said of banks’ attitude toward virtual currencies. “Crypto is here to stay and whether or not you want to participate in it, some of your customers will be.” (READ MORE)
London-based startup Unmind just raised a $10 million Series A from Project A and Felix Capital.
The company utilizes a tech led, digital approach to mental health provision in the workplace. The funding is one of the largest Series A for a European mental health tech business.
"We live in a world where there is a totally unacceptable level of stigma around mental health," Dr Nick Taylor, CEO and cofounder of Unmind told Business Insider in an interview. "The negative impact on companies of poor mental health is massive and we want to help change that." (READ MORE)
Eminem’s surprise performance of “Lose Yourself” was one of the undeniable highlights of Sunday night’s Oscars — and the most puzzling. Why perform his Oscar-winning song 17 years after the fact? He won Best Original Song for the 8 Mile cut in 2003 but did not attend the ceremony.
In an interview with Variety, the rapper said that he was told that the Oscars had planned a tribute to past Best Original Song winners, with 8 Mile as part of a montage introduced by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The producers reached out to Eminem to perform; the timing was good, given that Eminem has just released his eleventh album, Music to Be Murdered By.
“I kinda figured maybe since I didn’t get a chance to do it [in 2003], maybe it would be cool,” Eminem told Variety. “Back then, I never even thought that I had a chance to win, and we had just performed ‘Lose Yourself’ on the Grammys with the Roots a couple of weeks before the Oscars, so we didn’t think it was a good idea. And also, back at that time, the younger me didn’t really feel like a show like that would understand me.”
The event was such a secret that the Dolby was locked down as Eminem rehearsed, and the rapper could have bailed on the appearance if news of it had leaked.
Eminem noted that he wasn’t even awake when he won the Oscar for “Lose Yourself.” “I think I was just at home with my daughter — and I didn’t watch it, either,” he said. “At that point in time Hailie had to be at school early in the morning, so [I was sleeping].”
Did he enjoy his belated Oscar spotlight? “Absolutely,” he said. “I got to hug Salma Hayek!”
Apple opened its first two stores — Apple Tysons Corner and Apple Glendale Galleria — on May 19, 2001. Apple said that more than 7,700 people visited the two stores during their opening weekend and Apple saw nearly $600,000 in combined sales in the two-day span.
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