“Apple Inc. hired search firm Egon Zehnder International to lead the recruitment of a new retail chief, according to a person familiar with the matter,” Adam Satariano and Jeff Green report for Bloomberg.
“Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president in charge of retail, is becoming chief executive officer of J.C. Penney Co. on Nov. 1,” Satariano and Green report. “He departs as the computer maker expands internationally. Of the 40 stores the company plans to open this fiscal year, 28 will be outside the U.S. Apple, with 327 total stores, made $3.5 billion from its retail operation in the third quarter, up 36 percent from a year earlier.”
Satariano and Green report, “Johnson, a former executive at Target Corp., is credited with building up Apple’s retail business. The first two stores were opened in 2001 in a bid to diminish Apple’s reliance on outside electronics retailers to sell its machines. The gambit worked: Apple’s sales per square foot of retail space were $4,355 in 2010, according to Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. That’s almost 30 times those of J.C. Penney, and two-thirds higher than luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co.”
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