[Bubba Ho-Tep]

The problem is that JC Penney has been circling the drain for 20 years. The model just doesn't work. They've had their lunch eaten by Walmart and Target on one side and Macy's on the other. Johnson at least had a vision of doing something different, but it was only an attempt to rearrange chairs on the Titanic.

Penney's will go the way of Montgomery Ward in a few years, and Sears probably isn't far behind them.

[arderkrag]

That’s a very accurate summation. Take away sales - the only reason anyone stil shopped there - and you have a dead brand.

[catnipman]

“The problem is that JC Penney has been circling the drain for 20 years. The model just doesn’t work. They’ve had their lunch eaten by Walmart and Target on one side and Macy’s on the other. Johnson at least had a vision of doing something different, but it was only an attempt to rearrange chairs on the Titanic.

Penney’s will go the way of Montgomery Ward in a few years, and Sears probably isn’t far behind them. “

You may be right, but when Johnson abruptly terminated all JCP coupons and sales as if JCP had the unchallenged cache of an iPad, it was like dynamiting the engine room of the Titanic right after it struck the iceberg. At that point, JCP instantly lost pretty much all of their shoppers forever, shoppers who understood the old value model but had no reason to believe the new model had value, and therefore moved to stores where they DID understand the value model, and who will never be coming back to JCP, no matter what JCP does now. Obviously, Johnson was a one-trick pony, and his trick destroyed JCP. Equally obvious, the JCP board was, and probably still is, clueless, given the fact that they thought the one-trick pony Johnson was the right guy to run JCP and kept him on as long as they did.