GREAT WORK – AT 9:09 A.M. ET:  We love to celebrate American achievement here.  And one of the great corporate achievements in recent memory is the resurrection of Apple Computer.  The company was dying only 15 years ago, before it brought back its co-founder, Steve Jobs, and let him dream. 

Now Apple is considered one of the leading American brand names.  And nothing symbolizes that better than the Apple Store, which will be ten years old tomorrow.

(CNN) -- It started with one store at Tysons Corner Center in Virginia, just outside of Washington.
Ten years and more than 300 stores later, it's become a retailing venture unique in the world of consumer electronics.

The Apple retail store, the stylized and shiny public face of the Cupertino, California-based gadget giant, turns 10 on Thursday.

It's a marketing strategy that few other companies could pull off, analysts say -- one powered as much by Apple's heralded (some would say overhyped) focus on style and presentation as by its products themselves.
But as the 2000s were just dawning, it was far from a sure thing.

"Around the time Apple started to roll out, Gateway's products were going the other way," said Adam Hanft, CEO of marketing and branding firm Hanft Projects, referring to the PC makers (they of the cowhide-designed boxes) who eventually gave up on their own retail-store model in 2004.

"If you go back and look at what all the pundits said, they all thought Apple was crazy to get into the retailing business."

Until then, the consumer technology model was fairly well set. Hardware manufacturers made computers and other gadgets, which were sold alongside their competitors at electronics and big-box retail stores. Picking up the cost of overhead, and gambling that shoppers would patronize a store with only one company's products, was considered risky.

By the end of the 2010 fiscal year, Apple had opened 317 retail stores, 233 in the United States and 84 in Europe, Asia and other countries, according to Ticonderoga Securities, which studies the company.

Apple stores across the world host long lines of acolytes -- er, shoppers -- with the retail launch of every high-profile new gadget, such as an iPhone or iPad. The stores earned roughly $3.2 billion, about 13% of Apple's total sales, in 2010, Ticonderoga said.

COMMENT:  I visit our local Apple Store often.  It is always jammed.  There's a SONY store in the same mall, and it gets little traffic.  Apple just has the dynamic of style and innovation written all over it.  It also has the sense to hire tech wizards who stand at something called the Genius Bar, and give free technical help to all Apple owners.

Have a dream, take a risk.  It's the story of free enterprise.  It doesn't always work out.  In this case, it worked out spectacularly.  Congratulations to Steve Jobs and Apple for establishing an American institution.

May 18, 2011