Apple Opens Big Apple Core Store

From the Steve Jobs-designed cube, the point of entry on the GM plaza, which faces the Plaza Hotel and Grand Army Plaza, to the bright, column-free shopping expanse below, with its i-Pod and Genius bars and its tables of supercool Macs and MacBooks, Apple appears to have met the challenge of creating a flagship store worthy of the distinction. It's the largest store in Apple's portfolio to date, and it will be the first Apple store to be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week (a fact unknown until a week ago by most of the 300 workers, including 250 new employees, who'd volunteered to work there). According to an Apple sneior vice president for retail Ron Johnson, 96 of those 300 will be so-called Genius workers who can handle a full barrage of technical questions from consumers."

"...Johnson says Apple's stores generate about $4,000 a square foot in sales for an average of $22.2 million a year; its first store, opened four years ago, brought in $11 million."