Posted on 04/10/2013 4:52:44 PM PDT by jimbo123
Its official: Apple is out of fashion at JCPenney.
Three top proteges of former Penney CEO Ron Johnson all of whom boasted stints at Apple on their resumes exited the retailer today, The Post has learned.
Chief Operating Officer Mike Kramer, Chief Talent Officer Daniel Walker and Chief Creative Officer Mike Fisher kicked off an exodus of high-profile Johnson hires that is expected to continue in the wake of his ouster, sources said.
Kramer who said publicly earlier this year that he hated the culture at Penney resigned as interim CEO Mike Ullman this week began to sharpen his ax, according to a source close to the retailer.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
It was always pretty clear that the key guy at Apple was Jobs and everyone else basically shined his shoes. The JCP board should be fired.
—— It was always pretty clear that the key guy at Apple was Jobs and everyone else basically shined his shoes. ——
The stock price seems to indicate that.
Google looks like Apple’s successor.
Losing their “Chief Creative Officer” likely means that they won’t be quite as “creative” when it comes to marketing to alternative life styles.
But it’s likely too late - unless they make a CLEAN BREAK with their immediate past, which is very unlikely.
Exactly. A chimp with learning disabilities could have been successful at Apple over the past 10 years.
The only other key person at Apple was their industrial designer.
The key industrial design and logistics. The game of cheap labor at Foxconn is over along with the 5-1 margin in phones.
Jobs went through a bunch of these guys. Ultimately, Jobs had the final say. He designed nothing himself and really did not have any design chops, but he had a good feel for what would sell and what wouldn't. He kept prodding these designers into showing him new iterations, pushing them until he was satisfied, toward a final design he himself only fully envisioned at the end of the process. But his particular genius is that he not only finalized these great designs quickly, he got these projects completed before everyone else. He wasn't simply a guy with great aesthetic sense - he was a first-rate project manager. Jobs was sui generis - one of a kind.
Per the WSJ, Johnson never relocated from California and rarely worked more than 3 days a week.
Look out, these clowns will go and start a retail chain to compete with Penney’s, Target, Wal-mart, except in theirs there’ll be no sales, no discounts!
From NY Times:
Mr. Johnson dismissed most of the top executives from Mr. Ullmans reign and brought in his own team, largely from Apple and Abercrombie & Fitch.
But few of the top executives he had hired relocated to Texas, instead working there a few days a week, staying quarantined, as a veteran put it. Penney hands used the acronym AAPLE to refer to the newcomers Apple & Abercrombie Paid to Lose Earnings.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/business/how-an-apple-star-lost-his-luster-at-penneys.html
Too late. I’ll never shop there again and I know I am not alone in that regard.
I wonder why Bill Ackman was in love with this guy?
If Johnson had been called in as a turnaround expert, that is another kettle of fish. He was called in to make a transition to the future of retailing in a time when online sales are shifting the landscape.
Who the h$ll knows where it is going to end up.
I for one like the Amazon model. No bricks and mortar...just wire and warehouses. But it is hard to move Penny's into that model without killing its brand.
So how many millions did he get to go away? Need one of those jobs myself one day.
Maybe JCP will be going extinct. Now how did that business plan work for JCP?
Massive hubris rarely works well in corporate settings.
I suspect ole RJ actually believed people were purchasing Jobs’ hardware because of RJ’s brilliant retail strategy.
No parachute for Johnson. And his signing bonus stock grants are underwater.
The American retail middle is dying off in my view.
You’ll have Nordstrom/Saks/Nieman Marcus and Dollar General/WalMart/Family Dollar.
Foostam city for the Johnsons!
That said, the retail business is in a hard place (and times ain't normal).
I can understand their error. Johnson sold them an idea...and they bought it. They are all wiser now. Let's see if they can read the tea leaves and make a good decision this time.
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