“It’s official: Apple is out of fashion at JCPenney,” James Covert reports for The New York Post.
“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,” Covert reports. “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.”
Covert reports, “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.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: J.C. Penney. The Montgomery Ward of the Twenty-Teens.
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Can you imagine what an utter moldy bore it would be to work at J.C. Penney? It’s got that old age corporate smell. At least Ron was trying to think outside the box. His main crime was maybe moving too fast. Now that any chance of moving the company forward has gone by I predict Penney won’t last long.
I think Ron’s biggest problem was he tried to do it all at once — dropped the sales/coupons which current JCP customers were used to, didn’t have new brands moved in yet, and rearranged the deck chairs (store merchandise).
If he had first changed the product lines, then remodeled (or perhaps some mild remodeling while new product lines were coming in), and THEN worked on changing the sales/coupon shopping structure, I think he would have been more successful. However, I’m not sure he really had that kind of time anyway. JCP may have fallen down even if he had moved slower.
Dinosaurs tend to do that.
JC Penny is just Sears without tools.
Break it up.. sell it off in pieces… That’s what they like in texas… Ricky’s plan to take over mexico… STUPIDITY REIGNS SUPREME !!!
Meh. As a former shopper in the store I can say, as nice as the Apple stores are, the same style displays/sales techniques don’t work on shirts and blue jeans. The former Apple folks didn’t try anything new for clothing retailers, they just tried to copy Apple success, which clearly works best with electronics.
I’m so disappointed. Ulman is on record of saying they wouldn’t turn back the clock to pre-Ron Johnson JC Penney, but I think that is the intent. They’ve lost a new customer. I was so looking forward to the finished transformation.
Why would they do that I am sure in their position there would have been a healthy exit package once the new CEO came in and oustred Ron’s hires.
Anybody hired after Johnson came onboard shouldn’t be waiting for the boot, they should be racing for the door on their own initiative.
Kramer — who said publicly earlier this year that he “hated the culture” at Penney — resigned…
Once a work culture has been poisoned, making it healthy again is next to impossible. It’s not for the faint of heart. I saw it at Eastman Kodak; Hated it; Watched Kodak rot into a shriveled raisin of a company.
I’m a bit surprised Ron Johnson et al. didn’t research what they were getting into and run like hell away from JC Penney in the first place. Live and learn. 😳
Sometimes you can’t really see the culture until you get immersed into it and you’re not “the new guy” any longer, so people drop the new facade and go back to their old, set ways. Even at that, most ambitious people who go for these types of makeover/savior jobs inherently believe that they can do what others could not.
Then reality often knocks them down. Sometimes the tide is just too strong to swim against.
Good points.
Can’t handle a little bit of criticism MDN? Delete my post after I bring up Apple Insider and Mac Rumors? Finally post the article about the delay in the iPhone 5 S, iPad and iPad mini because I state that it’s on those other sites and you only post pro Apple news? Hey, truth hurts.
Maybe the company was not possible or for Ron to turn around. Maybe it’s too stuck in its old ways.