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If they really wanted change, they should probably have rebranded completely. I'm 40 years old and throughout my entire life, JC Penney has represented a prett

If they really wanted change, they should probably have rebranded completely. I'm 40 years old and throughout my entire life, JC Penney has represented a pretty consistent image of being a discount store where old people shopped. I don't think anyone (including Steve Jobs) would have been able to modify that image in my mind in a scant 2 years while keeping the brand name, the image is just too entrenched at this point. This leaves the store in a worst-of-all-worlds position where people who don't currently shop there maintain the decades-old image of what the store used to be while people who did shop there are put off by the changes. I don't know anything about the retail clothing business but just based off common sense I could have predicted this short-term result based on the half-way measure of trying to redefine an iconic (for better or worse) brand without actually rebranding. Seems pretty obvious, no?

Zimahl 14y ago
There is a way to successfully appeal to a broad range of consumers. Target is a master of this. Johnson wasn't or at least felt the scorched earth policy was going to get it done faster. Too much, too fast for the JCP core consumer.
- arithmetic 14y ago
  Johnson leaving is also a lesson that cut-and-paste strategy (applying what worked at Apple as-is to JC Penny without considering the differences between the two target customer bases - like the 'no sale' strategy) almost never works.
- chucknelson 14y ago
  > Target is a master of this. Johnson wasn't... Well, Johnson was most likely a big part of Target's past and continuing success. He was VP of Merchandising (among other roles across 15 years) at Target.[1] JCP was just the wrong fit I think. [1] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/ron-johnsons-resume-18911080#.UWPgd6vEoug http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/ron-johnsons-resume...
yajoe 14y ago
You are spot on. This is hardly a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and I personally just made a little bit of money on my bet he would get fired :) Time to share my understanding. My connection: I used to live off Legacy Drive in the Deerfield neighborhood in Plano and hence have heard some second-hand accounts about his behavior. If you read anything about this guy's tenure at the company, it becomes apparent he was riding someone else's coattails at Apple and possibly at Target... because all he did was copy org structures from Apple to graft them onto JCP without understanding why or how they worked at Apple. He lacked basic retail understanding and was a typical middle-road MBA pointy-haired boss. I just wish I understood how I could get hired to fail like he and so many other execs do -- the pay is so much better! The joke is clearly on me. He was no different than a 'Senior dev' copy-pasting a bunch of Stack Overflow Java code in your team's C environment. Guess what, it was convincing at first but doesn't work ("what do you mean C has memory leaks?"). His approach failed for many reasons, but most succinctly the failure is because JCP is a discount brand and Apple is a premium brand. So far our understanding of retail is that premium and discount stores operate differently. He thought he could take premium behaviors and apply them to discounts (in fairness, this is what he took credit for at Target, but having talked to people in MN it seems that credit was JCP PR to explain how he got hired). My favorite moves from this guy (recalling from memory, apologies for not providing HN-worthy citations): -- When it became clear JCP was't getting traction with the new promotion structure ('best price' nonsense) last summer he blamed and fired his good friend and longtime colleague who he personally brought to JCP. He had worked with the guy for years, and somehow the execution of a bad idea was the problem. He took no responsibility and charged ahead. Very quietly he started dismantling his bad ideas. -- He stopped discount sales altogether. At a discounter. Without explaining or convincing others that they would have cheaper prices than competition. -- He stopped clearance altogether. Most of my purchases at JCP over the years have been from clearance, so people like me had zero reason to step inside the store ever again. -- He never moved to Plano so he could keep attending church in CA, and he only flew to the HQ 3 days a week (on average). Plano has an equivalent denomination church, and I imagine his CA community would understand the absence. Few people at the company HQ had a chance to talk to him in person. I don't understand how you can turn around a billion-dollar corporation remotely. -- He encouraged teams not to talk to each other and be secretive, because somehow that led to a better customer experience when everyone was confused. He asked some teams to report directly to him. JCP doesn't build consumer products, they build store layouts and discount structures. The secrecy was stupid when you consider he managed remotely and was a communication point-of-failure. Some 'incubator' teams were allowed full access to disrupt normal operations, and my understanding is that there was quite a bit of friction that led to much lower productivity. -- The store-within-a-store concept was an udder failure. However, all public reports are that sales/sq-foot were higher in these store-within-a-store and therefore we were to infer a success. The real story is JCP took its best selling items, put them in the innovation, and sure enough they continued to be well-selling. Of course the per-sq-foot space sold better when the best selling items are concentrated. However, sales for the items dropped worse at a store-within-a-store once re-arranged alongside the rest of sales. If you are curious about this pattern in general, you should watch what happens to Best Buy and Samsung with their new store-within-a-store experiment. I personally don't believe retailers should turn themselves into malls :) -- They had a small layoff where they targeted HQ people who watched too much YouTube. The packet inspection company had a PR-like piece in the WSJ advertising how well it worked to target those shirking employees. The narrative makes sense except the positions eliminated were predominantly _fashion buyers_, who most likely were watching fashion shows and aspiring fashion makers on YouTube because travel budgets had been cut that same year. -- The Martha Stewart trial is beyond stupid and short-sighted. I think he should have found an up-and-coming who could produce similar quality but CHEAPER products rather than overpay for a has-been brand. There is a reason that Macy's is not giving Martha as much floor space as she expected. So, this rodeo has been extremely fun to watch, and I sincerely hope the next chapter for James Cash Penny's store is brighter. It is a good company with good people. It should be focused on the founder's values: good value and fair prices.
argonaut 14y ago
Well, speaking as a college student, I have a fairly neutral view of JCPenny. As far as I perceive things, it's sort of a discount chain, no different than a place like Target, and slightly downscale from a place like Macys.

Zimahl 14y ago

There is a way to successfully appeal to a broad range of consumers. Target is a master of this. Johnson wasn't or at least felt the scorched earth policy was going to get it done faster. Too much, too fast for the JCP core consumer.

arithmetic 14y ago
Johnson leaving is also a lesson that cut-and-paste strategy (applying what worked at Apple as-is to JC Penny without considering the differences between the two target customer bases - like the 'no sale' strategy) almost never works.
chucknelson 14y ago
> Target is a master of this. Johnson wasn't... Well, Johnson was most likely a big part of Target's past and continuing success. He was VP of Merchandising (among other roles across 15 years) at Target.[1] JCP was just the wrong fit I think. [1] http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/ron-johnsons-resume-18911080#.UWPgd6vEoug http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/ron-johnsons-resume...

yajoe 14y ago

You are spot on. This is hardly a surprise to anyone who has been watching, and I personally just made a little bit of money on my bet he would get fired :) Time to share my understanding. My connection: I used to live off Legacy Drive in the Deerfield neighborhood in Plano and hence have heard some second-hand accounts about his behavior. If you read anything about this guy's tenure at the company, it becomes apparent he was riding someone else's coattails at Apple and possibly at Target... because all he did was copy org structures from Apple to graft them onto JCP without understanding why or how they worked at Apple. He lacked basic retail understanding and was a typical middle-road MBA pointy-haired boss. I just wish I understood how I could get hired to fail like he and so many other execs do -- the pay is so much better! The joke is clearly on me. He was no different than a 'Senior dev' copy-pasting a bunch of Stack Overflow Java code in your team's C environment. Guess what, it was convincing at first but doesn't work ("what do you mean C has memory leaks?"). His approach failed for many reasons, but most succinctly the failure is because JCP is a discount brand and Apple is a premium brand. So far our understanding of retail is that premium and discount stores operate differently. He thought he could take premium behaviors and apply them to discounts (in fairness, this is what he took credit for at Target, but having talked to people in MN it seems that credit was JCP PR to explain how he got hired). My favorite moves from this guy (recalling from memory, apologies for not providing HN-worthy citations): -- When it became clear JCP was't getting traction with the new promotion structure ('best price' nonsense) last summer he blamed and fired his good friend and longtime colleague who he personally brought to JCP. He had worked with the guy for years, and somehow the execution of a bad idea was the problem. He took no responsibility and charged ahead. Very quietly he started dismantling his bad ideas. -- He stopped discount sales altogether. At a discounter. Without explaining or convincing others that they would have cheaper prices than competition. -- He stopped clearance altogether. Most of my purchases at JCP over the years have been from clearance, so people like me had zero reason to step inside the store ever again. -- He never moved to Plano so he could keep attending church in CA, and he only flew to the HQ 3 days a week (on average). Plano has an equivalent denomination church, and I imagine his CA community would understand the absence. Few people at the company HQ had a chance to talk to him in person. I don't understand how you can turn around a billion-dollar corporation remotely. -- He encouraged teams not to talk to each other and be secretive, because somehow that led to a better customer experience when everyone was confused. He asked some teams to report directly to him. JCP doesn't build consumer products, they build store layouts and discount structures. The secrecy was stupid when you consider he managed remotely and was a communication point-of-failure. Some 'incubator' teams were allowed full access to disrupt normal operations, and my understanding is that there was quite a bit of friction that led to much lower productivity. -- The store-within-a-store concept was an udder failure. However, all public reports are that sales/sq-foot were higher in these store-within-a-store and therefore we were to infer a success. The real story is JCP took its best selling items, put them in the innovation, and sure enough they continued to be well-selling. Of course the per-sq-foot space sold better when the best selling items are concentrated. However, sales for the items dropped worse at a store-within-a-store once re-arranged alongside the rest of sales. If you are curious about this pattern in general, you should watch what happens to Best Buy and Samsung with their new store-within-a-store experiment. I personally don't believe retailers should turn themselves into malls :) -- They had a small layoff where they targeted HQ people who watched too much YouTube. The packet inspection company had a PR-like piece in the WSJ advertising how well it worked to target those shirking employees. The narrative makes sense except the positions eliminated were predominantly _fashion buyers_, who most likely were watching fashion shows and aspiring fashion makers on YouTube because travel budgets had been cut that same year. -- The Martha Stewart trial is beyond stupid and short-sighted. I think he should have found an up-and-coming who could produce similar quality but CHEAPER products rather than overpay for a has-been brand. There is a reason that Macy's is not giving Martha as much floor space as she expected. So, this rodeo has been extremely fun to watch, and I sincerely hope the next chapter for James Cash Penny's store is brighter. It is a good company with good people. It should be focused on the founder's values: good value and fair prices.

argonaut 14y ago

Well, speaking as a college student, I have a fairly neutral view of JCPenny. As far as I perceive things, it's sort of a discount chain, no different than a place like Target, and slightly downscale from a place like Macys.