Opening Day
After what some consider a long snub, Apple finally arrives in Boston. And its Back Bay store, set to welcome customers on Thursday, was worth the wait.
Deep breath, Boston geeks.
Apple has arrived.
The much debated, highly anticipated, three-story glass facade building at 815 Boylston St. will open to the public on Thursday evening, making it Apple's largest retail venture in the United States. The Back Bay shop will feature oodles of gadgets, including 64 iPod music and video players, 104 Mac laptops and computers, and a third floor dedicated entirely to service that can accommodate 100 customers receiving one-on-one training at the same time.
For many local technophiles, Thursday's opening will end Apple's long snub of Boston. Despite the company's world dominance in all things cool and sleek, the absence of the innovation icon in the city's retail district has been a sore spot for some time. Boston, one of the few major cities without an Apple store, also was jilted by the technology giant when Apple refused to attend the Macworld trade show after it moved back to Boston from New York in 2004.
"Boston is obviously a tech-savvy area with a lot of high-tech companies and a history of innovation. To not have a store in Boston is kind of a black eye on the city. There was a glaring hole," said Josh Martin, a senior analyst at the Yankee Group, a market research firm in Boston. "This store opening is Apple's coming out party in the Northeast region. It is Apple planting its flag to say: 'We're going be here for a long time.' "
Apple, for its part, said it identified the Boylston Street site back in 2000, but had to wait until the lease ran out for the previous tenant, printing business Copy Cop, according to Ron Johnson, Apple's senior vice president of retail. In the meantime, Apple opened eight smaller stores in area suburban malls, which quickly became known as hip consumer-friendly destinations to shop, learn, and work. (More than 5,000 people applied for the 165 jobs at the Boston store.)
The roughly 20,000-square-foot building on Boylston Street is part of an elite cadre of about 10 high-profile Apple stores opened in high-traffic neighborhoods with extensive amenities and a vast array of products on display. Company officials initially considered keeping the Boston site - its 210th shop - open 24 hours daily, but decided against it. Instead, the Boston store will operate from 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily, the second longest hours for an Apple store worldwide behind its New York location.
The entire first floor is dedicated to Macs (iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac mini, Mac Pro); the second floor is devoted to smaller devices, including iPhones and iPods (iPod touch, iPod nano, iPod shuffle, iPod classic); and the third floor will feature the famed Genius Bar, where customers can get technical help, and areas for personal training sessions. Concierge staff will be available on each floor just to help consumers navigate the building.
The Boston shop will offer free four-week "Pro Lab" sessions, in-depth training on Apple's professional creative applications, including digital photography and video editing. Staff will host a "summer camp" in July that provides youths with free classes on how to make movies and create websites, among other topics.
Across the street from the Prudential Center, Apple's store will be awash in natural light, with a glass facade and palate of signature materials used in other stores, including a gray stone floor. There will be an ecofriendly roof blanketed with vegetation designed to keep the building cool in the summer and insulated in the winter. When it was first proposed, the ultramodern design came under attack by Back Bay neighbors accustomed to more historic architecture. But after some design tweaks, Apple was welcomed to the neighborhood.
Company officials would not provide a tour of the finished store, but sketches submitted to the city show a spiral staircase in the center and a large Apple icon hanging in the front that lights up.
Retail analysts attribute Apple's store success to the same formula that has made their products among the best-selling and most-desired across the world: accessible, friendly, and hip. Apple's stores average about $2,500 in sales per square foot, far outpacing retailers like Best Buy, which averages about $970 in sales per square foot, according to a 2006 report by Forrester Research analyst Ted Schadler.
Michael Oh, an Apple reseller located directly behind the new Apple shop in the Back Bay, recognizes this success and has adjusted his business model to focus more on professional clients and less on consumers so that it wouldn't compete as much with the new behemoth moving in.
"They can throw a lot more money into the retail experience compared to what we can do," said Oh, who owns Tech Superpowers on Newbury Street, and has had a webcam taping the construction of the new store for the past year. "We're obsessed with Apple like everyone else. It just so happens that our vendor is now our biggest competitor."
Jenn Abelson can be reached at abelson@globe.com. 