Jason Ellis had visited many stores selling cell phones, and he was sure he could do better.

Ellis, now president and chief executive officer of Spring Communications (the Spring Retail Group), didn't think most cell phone distributors were doing their national carriers any favors. Stores were full of staff who were pushy and, at the same time, lacked knowledge. True customer service was rare.

So in April 2001, Ellis and some partners founded Spring Mobile as a different kind of cell-phone retailer, one whose primary goal was providing a remarkable retail experience for customers.

That model was successful and, in time, Ellis headed a small empire of 76 Spring Mobile stores in four states. But he still was on the lookout for new opportunities. He soon found one in selling Apple products, which historically have been sold mainly online or through the company's 200 corporate stores.

To run that business unit, Simply Mac, Ellis brought in Steve Bain, who serves as president of that unit of the company and chief operating officer of the Spring Retail Group. Bain and Ellis approached Apple, eventually convincing the company to let them start up what Bain calls "a new form of consumer retailing."

Since its founding in 2006, Simply Mac has expanded to three stores and 45 employees. The stores' data suggest that 71 percent of the customers that bought an Apple computer from Simply Mac had previously been PC users — a figure that handily beats Apple's corporate stores.