EP 340 — Ron Johnson, the Man Who Built the Apple Store

We're unapologetic fanboys of Apple and great retail experiences on this show, so for Apple's 50th anniversary — and the 25th anniversary of the first Apple Store — we brought on the person who actually created the modern Apple Store concept: Ron Johnson.

Ron built his career in 10-year cycles, and each one changed retail. At Target, he dreamed up the first designer collaboration in retail history (Michael Graves) and helped turn a Midwest discounter into a place people bragged about shopping. At Apple, he opened the first stores in 2001 — when Gateway was folding, Dell was winning, and everyone thought a 5%-market-share computer company had no business signing mall leases. He named the Genius Bar (Steve Jobs told him nobody would buy it), killed the cash register with a mobile checkout built on an iPod Touch, and left in 2012 with a million people a day walking into Apple Stores. Then he took the hardest job in retail — CEO of JCPenney — and he's refreshingly honest here about what went wrong.

What we get into:

→ The Michael Graves deal, and why "design" beat "fashion" at Target → Why Steve Jobs hated the idea of mall stores — and how Ron changed his mind → Where the Genius Bar name came from, and the meaning behind it → Killing the cash wrap: mobile checkout in 2008, self-checkout in 2010 → Spending the morning of 9/11 with Steve Jobs → JCPenney, situational arrogance, and the change-management lesson he owns → Why omnichannel won — stores didn't, online didn't → What agentic commerce and AI actually do to shopping (and Satya Nadella's "token capital")

Ron's book, Shop Different, comes out September 22nd from HarperCollins. It's built around the Harvard Business School case study of his career — Harvard's most popular first-year case — and it's going to be one of the must-reads of the fall for anyone who loves retail. Links to buy it are in the show notes.

http://jasonandscot.com

Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of ReFiBuy.AI and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing.

Episode 340 of the Jason & Scot Show was recorded on Friday, June 19th, 2026