London - Red carpet VIP areas and hi-tech displays for solid gold products could feature in a radical redesign of Apple stores, in a bid to weed out "tourists and truants" while winning back customers.
Following complaints over queues to get into the shops and to book appointments for technical help, the overhaul has been revealed in a rare interview with Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple's senior vice-president of design.
Ive has teamed up with former Burberry chief executive Angela Ahrendts, who became Apple's senior vice-president of retail last year, on a redesign of the Apple stores which is still under wraps.
The British-born designer, 47, has "always wanted to do luxury", according to Clive Grinyer, a friend and former colleague.
Ive, who has been with the company since 1996, is behind the look of some of the most iconic products in modern times, such as the iPod, iPhone and the iPad.
Yet for all this, and despite being described by the late Steve Jobs as his "spiritual partner", he has described himself as "always anxious" in recent months.
When it comes to Apple stores, he has reason to be; their popularity has dipped since they first opened in Britain more than a decade ago. In fact, Apple did not even make the top 10 in the latest annual high-street survey from Which?
Overcrowding in the stores and long queues just to book an appointment at their Genius Bars have led to the stores falling out of favour.
The company is pinning its future fortunes on the Apple Watch, which will be available later this year, with prices starting at £217. It features a "digital crown" touchscreen and comes in a range of materials including black stainless steel, silver or grey aluminium and 18-carat gold.
The New Yorker magazine revealed the planned changes in an article describing "a glass-topped Apple Watch display cabinet, accessible to staff from below, via a descending, motorized flap, like the ramp at the rear of a cargo plane" on view in Ive's studio. His solid gold versions of the new product, the Apple Watch Edition, are expected to cost thousands of pounds each.
And hinting at the accompanying upmarket look he is going for with the remodelled stores, the designer recalled overhearing someone saying: "I'm not going to buy a watch if I can't stand on carpet."
The encounter with Ive left the interviewer, Ian Parker, feeling that the new-look shops will "surely become a more natural setting for vitrines filled with gold (and perhaps less welcoming, at least in some corners, to tourists and truants)".
The drive to create VIP areas is counter to the simple and functional look which has made Apple one of the world's biggest brands.
But it may derive from the influence of Ms Ahrendts, as well as other luxury fashion figures recently poached by the company, including Paul Deneve, former chief executive of the Yves Saint Laurent Group, and Patrick Pruniaux, former vice-president of sales at TAG Heuer.
In a statement yesterday, an Apple spokesperson said the company had nothing to add to what was in the New Yorker article.
The Independent