“When I heard about it, I thought it must be impossible. Stockholmers won’t let them build a big store in Kungsträdgården. City parks are a little bit holy in Stockholm. You can’t privatise a park.”
But the retail strategy Apple announced last year suggests that it was no misjudgment: blurring the boundaries between public and private space is exactly what the company is trying to do.
“It’s funny, we actually don’t call them stores anymore,” Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s senior vice-president of retail, said in November last year, a sentiment reiterated at Apple’s new product event on Tuesday. “We call them town squares, because they’re gathering places where everyone is welcome.”
“It’s funny, we actually don’t call them stores anymore. We call them town squares…”