Three weeks into her tenure as Apple’s head of retail, Angela Ahrendts is outlining a three-part strategy for Apples retail future. It includes a stonger emphasis on China as a market, mobile payments, and revamping the end-to-end sales experience at brick-and-mortar Apple stores.
According to 9to5mac, Ahrendts is shifting the way the retail division is lead, and changing the center of authority to more closely refit her focused vision. New to the team is former Delta executive Bob Kupbens, who joined before Ahrendts’ tenure, but is Kupbens is known industry wide for the work he did in radically re-inventing Delta’s Web customer service. Ahrendts also reportedly aspires to tie the online and brick-and-mortar Apple retail experiences and can draw form Kupbens experience to compliment her physical retail experience from Burberry.
Ahrendts has reportedly additionally given broader responsibilities to the head of China Retail, Denny Tuza, and her intention to directly work with the head of Chinese retail may signal an increased push into the Chinese market. Ahrendts has previously openly stated her believe that opening up the Chinese consumer market will be a necessary step for any large scale business in the future.
Ahrendts is also reportedly working in tandem with a team being assembled by former online store chief Jennifer Bailey and Kupbens to o build a mobile payments service for the iPhone and improve mobile payments in Apple’s retail stores and mobile apps. This information with the caveat that Apple’s mobile payment service has been speculated about heavily, particularly since the information on the hundreds of millions of credit cards they have on file.
However, the reporting is consistent with Ahrendts’ publicly stated goal of tying the online and in-store Apple experience together for a better end-t0-end user experience.
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