Ron Johnson Says J.C. Penney Should Have Stuck With His Plan
Even though his strategy a few years ago to reinvent J.C. Penney sent the department store chain’s annual sales down $6 billion and caused a major cash crisis, former CEO Ron Johnson maintained on Monday that the retailer would have been better off sticking to his plan.
Johnson, previously a star retailer at Apple and Target, was hired by Penney in 2011 to great fanfare, given a mandate by investors like hedge fund titan Bill Ackman to radically overhaul the department store chain. He did that by getting rid of its discounting culture and beginning to refashion its stores as collections of boutiques for hip brands like Jonathan Adler and Michael Graves (brands that Penney has since dropped). He launched his redesign without the advance testing that’s a standard practice in retail. Read more at Fortune.
