In interesting counterpoint to Brian’s piece this week on Wall Street’s unreasonable pummeling of Amazon.com’s stock, we’d like to present a current Wall Street darling. Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you once again: Apple. I know you’re probably sick of hearing about Apple, but since Steve Jobs’ passing, we’ve learned more and more about the inner workings of the place. And since Ron Johnson went to JC Penney, we’ve started to see the method behind the seeming madness of Apple’s success as a vertically integrated, channel-indifferent retailer. It wasn’t an accident, and while it may currently seem like a singularity, we contend the company’s success can be replicated.

How much does Wall Street love Apple? Yesterday RSR partner Nikki Baird sent a really interesting link around to the RSR team. It’s from tumblr and is titled “Things Apple is Worth More Than. ” It includes such “small things ” as the United States Aircraft Carrier Fleet and (wait for it) TWICE the entire US clothing store business (according to First Research). The piece reports annual revenue for the entire apparel retail industry is around $150 billion. Apple’s market cap at the time of the article’s writing was $380 billion. Apparently that information is dated…it’s now $466 billion (as of this writing). Yes, I understand annual revenue and market cap are not the same. But it’s a point well taken.

I’m sure by now your brains are tossing out all the reasons why Apple and you are not the same. When I’ve mentioned the Apple Store’s average sales per square foot ($2406 last I heard, higher than Tiffany), I’ve been dismissed with “Well, that’s because the store only sells three or four products at a time and they’re all very high price points. ” That’s not right. The Apple Store has high margin, low cost accessories that can be bought just like the rest of our stores. And I just spent more money on an Asus laptop (returned – misrepresentation of WLAN card ability) than I did on many of my Apple toys.

We know that Apple employees are trained NOT to sell. And I know you’ve heard the story of the free $832 Mac Air repair an in-store employee gave me. Contrast that with the restocking fee an unnamed on-line electronics vendor just charged me even though I could easily prove that the ASUS product had been misrepresented by the manufacturer. The CSR I spoke with on the phone was just not authorized to do anything, and ASUS tech support, well….they knew less about the thing than I did.

Which brings me to another reason Apple’s market cap is so high. Apparently, the Harris Poll just recorded Apple as having the highest reputation score in the poll’s eleven year history. In aggregate year over year change, only Apple, Toyota, General Motors and BP enjoyed an improvement in scores (and seriously, how much lower could GM and BP have gone???), while fully another 25% saw drastic declines.

Most of us justify to ourselves how we can’t be like Apple, but Ron Johnson is over at JC Penney setting out to prove that others CAN innovate like Apple. I’m sure Nikki will continue covering the transformation of JCP in more detail. Personally, I’ve already warmed up to the company. He had me with “The end of door busters. ” He further wormed his way into my heart after JCP selected and stuck by Ellen Degeneres as JCP’s new corporate spokesperson despite a backlash from a group called “The Million Moms ” – who, I guess, are all moms, but definitely number fewer than a million. Mr. Johnson is savvy enough to recognize Ellen’s TV ratings and Q-Quotient. Both Ellen and he were relatively gracious in saying “Sorry – not gonna bow to this pressure. ” We suspect the “boycott ” of JCP from the right will be about as successful as the boycott of Target from the left, which is to say not at all.

Lori Schafer (retail tech icon, runner extraordinaire, brave woman, and co-author of Branded!) shared an Associated Press interview with Ron Johnson on her Facebook page. When I read it, his answer to the question of “Who are your main competitors? ” jumped out at me. “Our number one competitor is ourselves and our way of thinking, which is informed by decades of experience. It’s not another store; it’s not another format like the Internet. Our competition is ourselves and our best friend is our imagination. “

Amen, brother. Not one mention of “showrooming ” or “Amazon ” or specialty stores.

All of this is the long way round to say it is time to think about what’s possible, instead of looking at what’s impossible. The customer has already partially re-written the story of retail with her smart phone. It now remains for us, as in industry, to finish that re-definition ourselves, to find a way to really be customer-friendly and add value to our stakeholders and shareholders.

For what it’s worth, I think Amazon’s market cap will rise again. Wall Street can’t argue with results, and I only see Amazon gaining more ground (tried its streaming video service yet? With many films and documentaries free for Prime customers? Adios Netflix!).

What are YOUR plans? Follow your imagination and don’t do anything really dumb. Wall Street will eventually come around to your point of view. And we’ll be writing about things YOUR company’s market cap is larger than.