Ron Johnson helped build the Apple Store at a time when analysts thought online shopping would make it pointless. Now he’s skeptical of the newest prediction about how people will buy things. “AI is a new technology that will improve the online shopping experience,” Johnson told TechCrunch. “But I don’t know that it’s going to change which way we shop.”
Johnson’s book, Shop Different: How Retail Revealed Apple’s Genius, written with Zander Nethercutt, came out Tuesday. It covers his years at Mervyn’s and Target, but most of it is about Apple, where he started on Feb. 1, 2000, and worked with Steve Jobs on the plan that led to the first two Apple Stores in May 2001, MacRumors reported after reading an advance copy.
Weak start, long payoff
The book details the full-scale store mockup Apple built in a Cupertino warehouse, the fight for prime real estate, Jobs’ first reaction to the “Genius Bar” name and the stores’ weak early sales before they took off. Later chapters cover Johnson’s last conversations with Jobs during his illness and his move to J.C. Penney, where he was ousted less than two years later after sales plunged. “I applied a startup mentality to what needed to be a turnaround transformation,” he told TechCrunch.
Competitors copied Apple’s glass, open layouts and even versions of the Genius Bar, Johnson said, but missed the most important part. “The secret sauce for Apple has always been its people, the people in the store, and how they treat the customer.” Apple Store staff aren’t paid on commission, so the job is figuring out what a customer needs instead of pushing a sale.
He’s also happy with where Apple retail has gone since he left fifteen years ago, crediting Deirdre O’Brien, who worked on store inventory before the first location opened, with bringing the stores back to their original mission after “a little a difficult period.”
An AI optimist who still wants to hold the laptop
Johnson’s doubts about agentic shopping are specific. Asked whether someone would let an agent pick and buy a $1,000 or $2,000 laptop without ever visiting a store or website, he said, “Honestly, nobody’s going to do that.” Buyers want to feel the weight and see the screen. He expects agents to narrow choices so shoppers arrive better informed. “AI will never be able to have you physically experience a product,” he said.
That doesn’t make him a skeptic of the technology. “I’m a real believer in AI. I’m an AI optimist,” Johnson said, adding that he thinks Jobs would have embraced it too, though not as a replacement for human judgment.
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