Are you a lover of luxury and fashion who can’t afford much of either right now? Want to work in an Apple Store? You might be just the potential employee that the tech giant is looking for to sell its Apple Watch when the timepiece hits stores in spring 2015.
According to internal hired documents leaked to 9to5Mac, Apple is now busily recruiting retail employees with “a fashion or luxury” background to staff its stores starting in early 2015. Since Apple has already hired former Burberry CEO Angela Ahrendts to give the Apple Watch a more fashionable image, this hiring strategy is just one more sign that the brand’s first wearable device will not be just another plastic smartwatch.
The idea of an Apple retail location going from a sterile facility filled with geeky “Geniuses” in polo shirts to a fancy jewelry store that you’re afraid to enter without being dressed for the occasion may seem like sacrilege to longtime fanboyz, but they’re just going to have to get used to it.
The Apple Watch may seem like a latecomer to the field of smartwatches, given how many tech companies have already released their own models, but Apple’s idea of presenting the timepiece as a fine item of fashion jewelry rather than just another tech gadget could be a game changer. If Apple expects to get its smartwatch onto the wrists of the rich, famous and fashionable, it will need a very special device and a new way of showing it off.
In press materials about the Apple Watch, the company has stressed the possibilities for personalization. Unlike most smartwatches that offer three or four options at best, the Apple Watch will be available in two sizes, 38mm and 42mm, four finishes and six band styles. That array of choices opens up a whole world of new challenges for the staff of Apple retail stores. If a customer wants to see a 38mm model in black stainless steel with a certain band, the employee needs to be able to show one immediately in order to make a sale.
That brings up the subject of security. Apple has been cagey about revealing the actual prices of the various models of the Apple Watch, only saying that they start at $350. There have been reports that the Apple Watch will be available in a gold “Edition” model selling for thousands of dollars. Prices may start at $350 but it looks like the sky’s the limit. Apple is going to need to hire more security guards along with those new style-savvy salespeople.
That gets us back to the original subject of hiring fashionistas to sell Apple’s new line of wearable devices. The picture of an Apple Store where trendily garbed salespeople show extravagantly designed and priced watches to equally fashionable customers would seem to be the antithesis of the Apple image—especially since that image was forged by a guy who wore the same black long sleeved tee shirt and faded jeans all the time.
