Every Apple Storefront Ever

Way back in August of 2001, some good friends and I took a road trip down to Virginia to attend a concert. Unfortunately the rains came, the venue got flooded, and the concert was cancelled. Disappointing, but as something of a concession prize, I got to check out the very first brick & mortar Apple Store, which had opened in Tysons Corner just a few weeks earlier.

At the time, most analysts considered Apple’s fledgling retail initiative to be doomed. But though Tysons Corner seemed like a modest start, it was a blueprint for big things to come. 357 stores and counting later, Apple is tops in sales per square foot, and they did it by applying many of the same principles as they do to their products: natural materials, understated aesthetics, and innovative processes.

Anyway, one thing I wanted to do was go back and see how Apple storefronts have evolved over the past decade. I couldn’t find anywhere to do this easily, so I decided to create a gallery myself. Check it out here:

http://applestorefronts.appspot.com/

Scanning the gallery, you can see that Apple follows certain conventions, but isn’t shy about breaking them. They’ve tweaked things here and there, and are quite audacious with their flagship locations. (By the way, is “flagship” a formal designation, and is there a list of them somewhere?)

What are your most or least favorites? What do you love or hate about them? Do you notice any trends? What do you think is Apple’s next step?

Notes

Images collected from Apple.com with Beautiful Soup. Opening dates courtesy of ifoAppleStore. The gallery uses Lazy Load by Mika Tuupola and is hosted on Google App Engine.

59 comments Write a comment

  1. Nice collection of storefronts. I’d forgotten how long ago the first stores appeared. I’ve only attended one opening but I like to visit them when they are nearby.

  2. Not a complaint, just a correction: your address and photo of the Apple Store in Montreal are incorerct. The address is: 1321 Sainte-Catherine St WMontreal, QC H3G 2V9.

    Check with google maps and you will see that your photograph doesn’t match.

    cheers.

  3. Great, great work.
    My thank you and congratulations!
    The AppleStore of Porto, Portugal, is missing! And this is a pity… :-)

  4. AWESOME WORK!!!! except for #357 it should be Burnaby, Canada, not Burnby… but HEY THIS IS SOOOO AWESOME!!!!!

  5. wow~! Great ~Thomas~! nice job~! i’m a apple fan from China living in Korea~~I’m wondering if u can pack all the pics and the informations so that we can keep it~!

    Thanks ^^*

  6. App Engine Error Over Quota
    This Google App Engine application is temporarily over its serving quota. Please try again later.Please fix this! Thanks!

  7. Thank you for providing this gallery. Saves me a ton of money to visit all of them in my lifetime. Keep adding more as they are built. …Lorrin Lee, Hawaii. lorrinleecom

  8. Dude!
    Awesome work collecting all photos from Apple Stores and putting them in a beautiful way.
    Congrats

    Hopefully I will see one in Brazil (and eventually visit it)

    Leandro
    Brazil

  9. Great collection and creative way of getting them all.  It is an awesome group for a concept that the pundits said would never work.

    How many have an MS store close by?  Does MS supply the same type of information or does no one care?

  10. This is wonderful! Thank you. (My celloson just auditioned for some universities in Indiana and I was curious where the nearest Apple stores were. I found them in your post!

  11. It’s great that someone went to the trouble to assemble this collection. This answers a lot of questions that I have had about stores in other cities.  Thanks

  12. Great collection! I’d like to add that the Apple Store on St-Catherine’s St. in Montreal, QC, Canada, is a high-profile store. They have bands playing every month and hold many events. It’s also a 2 story store unlike Laval’s 1 floor in-mall store. Apart from that, good job! Love the design too!

  13. Also, it would be interesting if you could incorporate some type of commenting system to comment on the stores. I’m sure many people would be interest in knowing things like special events or customer service. I know that it is far from being an easy thing to do, it’s simply a suggestion :P

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