License to sew apples

[lafeber]

I'ma sew your ass into a blur ♪ ♪
People won't even remember ♪ ♪
Karen Hurr ♪ ♪
And if you don't sew ♪ ♪ now you sew ♪ ♪ Betsy Betsy ♪
[Amy Schumer’s rap-parody of Betsy Ross who sewed the very first American flag; aka musical Hamilton mania]

В 2008 КНР готовилась к первой Олимпиаде на своей территории. Apple решил открыть небольшой (свой первый в КНР) двухэтажный магазин в Пекине из-за рекламных соображений. Олимпиада косвенно могла помочь бренду компании на мировом уровне. Но Apple столкнулся с проблемой – в законах КНР обнаружилась «ловушка 22». Лицензию торговой точки мог получить только владелец магазина, а магазин мог открыть только тот, кто получил лицензию торговой точки. Выход был найден оригинальный. Apple купил лицензию у уже работающего китайского магазинчика, который был ремонтной мастерской швейных машинок. [Это мне чем-то напоминает покупку лицензии таксиста во Франции. Сама лицензия стоит очень дорого. Она передается чуть ли не от поколения к поколению. Там узкое цеховое братство. Поэтому таксисты во Франции ожесточенно борются с «Убер» и его «нечестной» конкуренцией].

Цитата:
«Going through official channels, Apple would have been encouraged to form a partnership with a local business, or it could have received a license that limited its sales and distribution. Instead, Ford and a lawyer from Apple’s channel business came up with a clever idea: Why not just acquire an electronics retailer, amend the name and use that license? At first they were on the hunt for a large, respectable retailer, but one day Ford was out walking and randomly came across a cluttered store full of equipment. He looked closer. “There were just sewing machines everywhere: dusty, dirty, filthy; like a small mechanic shop,” Ford says. It was tiny. Ten square meters would be exaggerating – it was probably five». Sewing machines have chips in them, so technically they were electronics. And the store was in the same district as the mall, so the license could be transferred.

The store owner must have thought Ford was nutty. “I just walked in, started a conversation, and asked. ’If you wanted to sell your business, what would it take?” He lightly interrogated the owner with the niche questions about the license. Ford couldn’t tell if the owner was brushing him off or just didn’t understand. After a few minutes, he politely left. But he told Apple’s channel business about the possibility, and within a few days they were back in the store to clinch the deal. They didn’t reveal they were working for Apple, an admission that surely would have pushed the price higher. The owner agreed to sell for around $300,000, a life-altering sum. Within a few weeks the transaction was done: The license for a family-owned sewing machine repair shop became the legal basis Apple used to establish a multibillion-dollar retail presence that, by 2024 would include fifty-six physical stored and an enormous online outlet.