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Apple's Future Is In Lifestyle, Not Tech

Apple’s Hire Of Burberry’s Angela Ahrendts Shows Its Future Is In Lifestyle, Not Tech

Angela Ahrendts, Apple’s new head of retail.

When Apple announced its hiring of Burberry CEO (and Forbes Power Woman) Angela Ahrendts, they scored one of fashion’s great turnaround artists as their new head of retail and e-commerce.

They simultaneously added a welcome dose of diversity to their c-suite leadership. Ahrendts is the first woman to serve on Apple CEO Tim Cook’s top team, which is currently all male.

Ahrendts’ ascendance also serves to cement Apple’s decade-long transition from technology company to high-end lifestyle brand. Consider who she’s replacing: her predecessor John Browett came from Dixons, a British big-box electronics chain not unlike Best Buy and decidedly unglamorous (he lasted five months, deemed a bad cultural fit).

Before Browett came Ron Johnson, responsible for the roll-out of Apple’s original retail stores and its now famous Genius Bar concept. His background, like Browett’s, was more mass market than high fashion: he came to Apple from Target (he left for a disastrous tenure at JC Penney, but that’s another story).

“Browett and Johnson had the sensibilities, but not the sophisticated profile,” said Lucy Marcus, CEO of Marcus Ventures Consulting and an expert on corporate governance and leadership. “Ahrendts understands the importance of image and sensibility. She’s done a great turnaround job for Burberry — she’s turned it into a fashion brand with a sleek, slick image.”

Indeed, at Burberry, Ahrendts not only oversaw a tripling of revenues to $3 billion and a stock return of 300%, but she successfully revitalized a 150-year-old brand that had lost its way.

As my colleague Moira Forbes wrote when she interviewed Ahrendts last year, Burberry’s distinct plaid pattern had gone downmarket when the 53-year-old Indiana native took the helm in 2006. Britain’s working class youth had hijacked the print, as had counterfeit vendors peddling Burberry knockoffs on street corners around the globe. While marketers often consider a brand’s logo as sacrosanct, Ahrendts made the bold decision to remove the pattern from 90% of Burberry’s products.

Together with her young, cool chief creative director Christopher Bailey, who’ll replace her as CEO, Ahrendts worked to make Burberry relevant for a new, upmarket consumer — one exemplified by Kate Middleton, who chose a Burberry trench for her first outing as princess-to-be. Within 24 hours, the $1,000 coat sold out around the world.

By hiring Ahrendts, Cook and his team are signaling their desire to keep Apple just as fresh and upmarket as Burberry, which is renowned for its canny social media and web presence.

“They’ve brought in someone who doesn’t think like an electronics retailer,” said Kathy Gersch, executive vice president at leadership consultancy Kotter International. “When the Apple store was developed, it was outside of the box. They have to keep evolving that experience or it gets stale.”

They’ve also been smart to hire a head of retail who understands the buying decisions of women, particularly those with a disposable income.

“Attracting women is, in my mind, a high priority for Apple,” said Kelly Hoey, co-founder and managing director of startup accelerator Women Innovate Mobile, who has worked in partnership with Apple’s retail team on a speaker series. “If 85% of consumer purchases are directly made or influenced by women, why wouldn’t you hire someone who knows the female market?

Hoey added that Apple’s transition to a luxury lifestyle brand means shoppers now expect not just the best design and technology from the company’s products, but the best customer service. “We can buy an iPhone anywhere. AT&T. Best Buy. Why do I want to go into Apple? It has to be high-end. This is luxury.”

For Marcus, hiring Ahrendts represents an effort on Apple’s part to look outside the Silicon Valley bubble for leadership. “She’s had this great international experience, especially leading Burberry into Asia,” she said. “At these tech companies like Apple and Google and Twitter, there are so few international people on their boards and in top executive roles. It’s so Silicon Valley-centric. They need more people like Ahrendts, from outside their comfort zone.”

Hoey concurred. “They’ve hired the best person globally for this job,” she said. “It’s exciting that it’s also a woman.”

Angela Ahrendts

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Courtesy of Burberry Angela Ahrendts

Angela Ahrendts

Angela Ahrendts of Burberry.

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