Creating The Apple Store And Reinventing Retail With Ron Johnson - TWMJ #1054

Mitch Joel (0:00)

Well, hey there, and welcome to episode number 1054 of Thinking With Mitch Joel. It's Sunday, September the 20th, 2026 Let's get on with the conversation.

What happens when technology makes buying easier but human connection harder? For decades, we've been told that physical retail is disappearing, it's dying, that e-commerce and automation is going to eventually replace the physical store. But as we know, the opposite is absolutely true.

So what if the more digital our world becomes, the more valuable great in-person experiences become? Now, that is at the center of my very interesting conversation with Ron Johnson. Ron is the retail visionary who created the Apple Store alongside Steve Jobs, transforming it from a world that sold computers into one of the world's most influential customer experiences, literally reframing retail as we know it. Before Apple, he helped reinvent Target through design partnerships and he later served as the CEO of JCPenney, which did not go well. And now he shares the inside story of all of those experiences in his brand new book, Shop Different, and it is a banger. Our conversation explores why the Apple Store succeeded by serving rather than selling and how ideas like The Genius Bar fundamentally changed what a retail store could become and, more importantly, why relationships, not transactions, remain the true competitive advantage. We also talk about things like AI, dynamic pricing and experiential retail and why, in a world obsessed with efficiency, the businesses that thrive may be the ones that invest even more deeply in these human connections. So yes, it's a conversation about retail, but even more so, it's about what people will continue to value when technology can do almost everything and anything. Enjoy the conversation.

So who are you and what do you do?

Ron Johnson (2:06)

Yeah, I'm Ron Johnson. I'm a lifelong retailer, probably most known for creating the Apple stores. But currently, I'm an author and I have my first book coming out on September 22nd called Shop Different, which gives you the inside story of the Apple Store.

And more.

Mitch Joel (2:24)

Well, I'm really excited to talk to you. I was telling you off camera that being a bit of a retail rat from my whole existence in terms of just childhood, loving it. My dad was a retailer. And then as I got professionalized doing a lot of events for retail, I was very out there and quite the advocate for you when it was post-Apple JCPenney, which you were really pushing to transform.

And the results, I think, publicly in the press were not great. But I think it actually would be good to just start in that world. Everybody knows the Apple Store experience. They know what the dream was of JCPenney. To this day, I would probably defend the strategy.

Ron Johnson (3:05)

Yeah.

Mitch Joel (3:06)

What happened in that moment?

Ron Johnson (3:08)

Well, you know, it was a very difficult thing. I had just completed 12 years at Apple, and our stores went from nothing to $50 million in revenue per store. You know, $350, $400 around the world, very successful, and I was just turning 50

And I just felt like I wanted to do one more thing. I enjoy challenges, and I had grown up when department stores were really relevant. And during my time, not unlike yours, we had gone from 60 department stores in the US to about four or five. And specialty stores took over and big box stores and Target and Walmart and online shopping. And the department store kind of got to be a tired format. And I thought it'd be a really great way to end my career, to take a shot of trying to transform a historically great company, JCPenney. And I was first invited to be a board member.

And then the CEO had an unfortunate accident. And the board, after meeting me to be a board member, asked if I'd want to be CEO.

And Apple had become a hobby for me. And I said, you know, I'll take on the challenge. And that's what started it all. And then what was interesting, it's talked about in a lot of the book, three days before I was going to be announced as CEO in June, Steve called me up and said, can you come over to the house? And I said, sure. He said, Ron, I've got to tell you something I haven't told many people, but I'm not going to make it much longer. And I'd love you to stay for another six months if you could. Can you delay becoming CEO of JCPenneyd? I said, sure, I can do that for you. And I called up Mike Allman and said, Mike, good news, we can announce in three days, but I can't start till November. You know, and that created this time window where I slowly got to know the company as I winded down at Apple. But I developed, you know, in my own little world, a vision for what JCPenneyd could be.