Apple Boutique - Failure and Closing

Failure and Closing

The retail business lost money at an alarming rate, eventually running to £200 000 and the shop was closed on 30 July 1968. In a press release, explaining The Beatles' motives for closing the stores, Paul McCartney stated.

We decided to close down our Baker Street shop yesterday and instead of putting up a sign saying, 'Business will be resumed as soon as possible', and then auction off the goods, we decided to give them away. The shops were doing fine and making a nice profit on turnover. So far, the biggest loss is in giving the things away, but we did that deliberately. We're giving them away — rather than selling them to barrow boys — because we wanted to give rather than sell. We came into shops by the tradesman's entrance but we're leaving by the front door. Originally, the shops were intended to be something else, but they just became like all the boutiques in London. They just weren't our thingy. The staff will get three weeks' pay but if they wish they'll be absorbed into the rest of Apple. Everyone will be cared for ... All that's happened is that we've closed our shop in which we feel we shouldn't, in the first place, have been involved. Our main business is entertainment — communication. Apple is mainly concerned with fun, not with frocks. We want to devote all our energies to records, films and our electronics adventures. We had to re-focus. We had to zoom in on what we really enjoy, and we enjoy being alive, and we enjoy being Beatles.

The night before the closing The Beatles, their wives and girlfriends came to take what they wanted. The next morning it was announced that all the remaining stock was to be given away on the basis of one item per person. In his interview on The Beatles' Anthology Harrison describes the event: "We ended up giving the contents away. We put an ad in the paper and we filmed people coming in and grabbing everything." Word spread quickly and the shop was empty within hours. The public, numbering in the hundreds nearly rioted trying to get their share and the police attended.

The eighteenth century house was demolished in 1974 and replaced with Travelscene House, 94 Baker Street, London W1U 6FZ. This is an office building, taller than the eighteenth century house, with incorrectly proportioned neo-Georgian facades that pastiche the main facade of the original building, and forming part of a controversial redevelopment of the historic urban block to north and east.

On 31 July 2008, a recreation of the "Apple Boutique" mural was projected onto the building by BBC programme Newsnight to mark the 40th anniversary of the shop's closure. This was part of Newsnight's series marking the 40th anniversary of 1968 and brought together Pattie Boyd, Beatles' friend Tony Bramwell, and 'sixties actress, and later fashion designer, Edina Ronay to recall the controversial and eccentric Apple Boutique.

Although "Apple Boutique" no longer exists as a physical shopping location, it continues to exist as part of the Beatles' official online store.