“JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson is out, a source familiar with the situation said,” CNBC is reporting in a brief post.
“It was unclear if a successor has been named,” CNBC reports.
Source: CNBC.
MacDailyNews Take: Well, that was certainly short and sour.
Related articles:
Ron Johnson starting to look a lot more maniacal than brilliant – March 8, 2013
If JC Penney fires CEO Ron Johnson, analyst predicts bankruptcy – March 8, 2013
J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson cuts 2,200 more jobs as sales plunge – March 8, 2013
J.C. Penney posts large loss as sales sink further – February 27, 2013
JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson capitulates, brings back sales – January 28, 2013
Apple retail’s Ron Johnson and John Browett have proved the Peter Principle is alive and well – November 13, 2012
CEO Ron Johnson switches J.C. Penney to two-tier pricing with price-match guarantee – July 26, 2012
Why is Ron Johnson’s retail strategy for J.C. Penney failing? – June 26, 2012
J.C Penney’s stock tumbles after key exec’s abrupt exit – June 19, 2012
J.C. Penney reports loss and plummeting sales in 1Q – May 15, 2012
Why Ron Johnson left Apple to head JC Penney – April 30, 2012
J.C. Penney lures another executive from Apple – April 26, 2012
Steve Jobs’ ex-lieutenant Ron Johnson adds $1.5 billion to J.C. Penney in two days – January 30, 2012
J.C. Penney CEO Ron Johnson: What I learned building the Apple Store – November 21, 2011
New J.C. Penney CEO Johnson hiring former Apple co-workers – November 9, 2011
Why Apple’s retail genius Ron Johnson is paying for the privilege of running J.C. Penney – June 15, 2011
Apple’s retail store chief Johnson off to J.C. Penney; expected to become CEO within months – June 14, 2011
Well it helps if the store carries something people want to buy they can’t get somewhere else.
The successor will be Scott Forstall and they’ll be selling a nifty line of black turtlenecks soon.
with stitched leather labels
But of course. And would Madame like a personal concierge service to go with it?
Uh Mr. Cook, there is a Mr. Ron Johnson on the phone, line one…
Agreed… welcome him back pronto…
Get him back faster than pronto.
Met Ron Johnson in 2004 while I was in Hawaii, talked a few minutes about a project that I was implementing. He was gracious and engaging and interested. Had a proposal prepared and presented to me by local business sales staff.
Rather than take the deal direct, he wanted to make sure the people in Hawaii got the deal and the kudos. That is the quality of man he is.
Move the clock to the SYD Apple Store opening. he came outside of the store to greet us diehards in the line.He saw me and pulled me out of line and we hugged and talked for about five minutes. He asked about my project and if I still wanted to do business with Apple in regards to it.
That’s the quality of man he is. I’d like to see him back in the saddle and I am sure Tim Cook and Co. would too. He was highly regarded and respected there.
All of you naysayers really haven’t a clue.
Cheers.
Hint: STD = Sydney Australia
“STD = Sydney Australia”
The medical profession is using the term STI now, not STD, and why would you insult Sydney that way? 🙂
(I know what you meant, but typos can be fun)
I’m sure he has a great marketing mind even though he was selling Apple products in their prime. I don’t know how much of the customer service perfection was due to Ron Johnson or Steve Jobs? Perhaps both? But I always thought that was a terrible decision for him to take on JCPenney and try to turn it around. And it was. Well, so much for reputation and legacy.
The JC Penny turnaround was a monumental task. When I watched his investor presentation it was clear that this was not going to be quick. Not sure he understood that investors would turn on him. It’s sad but true that the market only understands the world in quarters.
A seemingly simple thing like changing out POS display systems could take a decade across the entire network of stores. Changing out their customer base will take longer (but is ultimately just as necessary).
Marketing is not a one-size fits-all body glove.
Target had a good demographic to go after.
Apple was in a class all of it own.
Penny’s is smashed too tightly in mall settings between Sears, Dillards, Foleys and Macy’s with Kohls and Target located closer to the neighborhoods.
It’s like that 3D piranha movie….they are getting eaten from all directions.
I seem to recall Target being kind of stodgy and run down before Ron Johnson, just like JCP is today. I think his efforts brought the demographic to Target. JCP just got too scared, too quickly. I wonder how they will proceed, since the customer base that left is gone and the new one isn’t coming to be part of a half-done transition. Where are they going to recover to?
I think Target saw a niche between Wal-Mart/K-Mart and Sears/Penney’s.
Better quality than the former and more local than the latter.
Ron Johnson made this market look upscale and chic to the middle class, and it worked.
JCP is just in the middle of too many others trying to get the same buck. Their mall stores here in the South seem to be only partially busy, but the few local stores that I have been to seem to do much better traffic wise (at least when I am there).
Since Target has never been a mall fixture, they were already in the neighborhoods. Maybe Penneys could buy up some abandoned pre-SuperCenter Wal-Mart stores?
I don’t know. I have always had a weakness for Penney’s since my Mother worked for them back in the late ’60s (ironically, we lived across the street from a Target and shopped there regularly….), although I only spend about $200-500 a year there.
Further evidence that there was only one Steve Jobs. Proximity to greatness can intoxicate, but only the breath of Apollo illuminates.
When ego trumps caution the result is usually disaster. Many years ago I watched a new CEO implement a policy of switching a large IT corporation from its very successful direct sales business to a channel business. In three months he was gone, having lost every major account and, with it, all their business. The channel, already committed to bigger players just weren’t interested. The corporation closed its doors shortly after the CEO’s departure. It was in the late 90’s, the corporation was AST and the country was Australia.
Margaret Thatcher died today as well.
“She turned the Conservatives, long associated with the status quo, into the party of reform. Her policies revitalized British business, spurred industrial growth and swelled the middle class.” – NY Times, April 9, 2013
We could use some of that stuff today!
They don’t build great minds and great people like her very often. Sad day for the world to lose her.
Thatcher mortgaged the UK’s future. The so-called “new middle class” was built on personal debt. The first wave of Thatcherism failed in the early 90s with the massive fall in the value of the Pound coupled with record business bankruptcies and house repossessions, the second was that the British economy’s industrial base was wiped out in favour of the entire country becoming financial middle-ware.
Look where that has gotten us. We now import just about everything and even our much-lauded banks are all but ruined.
Some leader eh? If you really want to wish that future on your kids you can’t like them very much.
Look where you were before you complain about where y’all ended up.
“Where we were” was before the North Sea Oil money started flowing. Even a government as financially incompetent as Thatcher’s can engineer a boom when the oil is pumping at a couple of million barrels a day. It doesn’t last though, as we’ve discovered.
We used to compete with Germany. These days we struggle to compete with Italy. What needed reform was instead destroyed, purely for ideology.
Really? Germany? What did England of 1978 have in common with Germany of 2013?
Thatcher has been out of power for 23 YEARS!!!!!!
If you can’t fix her supposed ‘wrongs’ in that time, then y’all are more incompetent that our Democrats blaming Bush 5 years later.
I swear, hearing revisionist look at charts and study from afar to make the correlation’s that fit THEIR ideology is the New Left’s History lesson.
I guess you believe Reagan didn’t do anything right, either?
Nothing with the economy, the military, the USSR?
Move to America Dave. Our ancestors did.
She was a twit. Ask any sane person in Britain. She and Reagan were of the same ilk.
Your second part was right (and what an ilk they were!).
The first part was typical of your Miss Informed self….
Ding dong the witch is dead
You need to read other reports. She was as bad as Reagan.
That’s what he said….she was great, like Reagan.
And if you have to rely on reports, then you are too young to have grown up and watch them change the world.
So many Monday morning couch quarterbacks, so few who are in the zone…..
And our current President isn’t even good enough to play Pop Warner.
I had a hell of a lot more job opportunities when Reagan was in office. If you didn’t like your job you just got another. Now you sit where you are regardless of misery or low pay and be thankful you’re working at all.
John Fugelsang: “If it wasn’t for Margaret Thatcher The Clash would’ve been like Herman’s Hermits.”
Horrible woman.
A great woman. Ronald Reagan, Pope John Paul II and Maggie Thatcher – all at the same time!
Those were the days, those were the days.
Too bad. He had some great ideas but few employees who understood them, much less the desire to implement them. It’s just an old, tired company with a confused product line-up. He was bold to try. Harvard Business School should take his introductory presentation to the financial community and use it as a case study on the difficulty of bringing brilliance into an existing organization.
Ron Johnson did well at Apple ONLY BECAUSE Apple had great products that people actually wanted. Shell we say, the products sold it self?
You’re wrong GoldDuster. It’s pretty easy to say that’s the case but it’s not. Apple stores have the highest output in dollars per square foot in retail in part due to Ron.
Nothing you can say can take that away, his concept indeed helped get the ‘retail’ out of the way, and show the products in the most effective, yet elegant way.
His concepts, including the Genius Bar, appealed, and continue to appeal to many as can be evidenced by the immense dollars coming from Apple Retail today.
The genius bar wasn’t new.
Yeah, GoldDuster, you are wrong about Ron Johnson. He was the genius behind the remarketing of Target before he came to Apple, and his vision for the Apple stores was critical to their success. He is a quality guy – he actually invested millions of dollars of his own money into JCP – and he deserved a much better fate. Heck, I hadn’t darkened the door of a Penney’s in over 20 years, but even I walked back in and bought some stuff. Tim Cook needs to very seriously look at recruiting the guy back to Apple.
mmmmmm not a good idea to bring him back. I’m with you, I believe that he was at least in part responsible for the success of the Apple retail stores. And did very well for Target. But I don’t believe he deserves a better fate. He’s a big boy. He knew what he was taking on. Or he should have. Most of us could see that it was a nearly insurmountable task to turn around JCPenney. JCPenney isn’t target. That comparison can’t be made. Target stores are nimble and didn’t need complete overhauls as do JCPenney stores. If he could’ve done that over a long period of time then perhaps he could have stayed. If the turnaround plan needed a rapid deployment then it was a flawed and doomed to fail plan. Sometimes reality is a bitch.
Maybe everyone doesn’t deserve a second chance, but Steve Jobs got one, and look what he was able to accomplish. Ron Johnson is golden, even if he was tripped on the way to the sluice box and came out tarnished. Bring him back. Who knows—Tim Cook might be more open to advice after bungling Johnson’s replacement.
“Mr Ballmer, I know how to upgrade your Microsoft stores.”
Put JC Penney in charge? 😉
Don’t even say that! I still live in fear Scott Forstall will cross to the Dark Side!
Probably got hire away by Samedung to implement its new storeswithin Best Buy.
Let’s get real. John Browett will take that spot
Apple could use him back, and I wouldn’t mind.
Countdown to JCP Bankruptcy begins.
Ron Johnson showed the dinosaur the path to reinvention and Wall Street and the rest balked.
Johnson should have fired the Bozos first.
MacDailyNews
Wednesday, February 18, 2004 · 12:17 pm · 33 Comments
Apple CEO Steve Jobs today sent out a letter to Apple employees:
Team,
Today is a historic day of sorts for our company. When I arrived back at Apple in mid-1997, the company was burdened with $1 billion of debt. Through everyone’s hard work we turned Apple around, paid off the majority of our debt and began to amass a war chest of cash in the bank which has grown to about $4.8 billion! But there was still $300 million of remaining debt, which we decided to hold to maturity.
Today we used $300 million of our cash to pay off this remaining debt.
Apple is now a debt-free company
Count how many quarters lapsed between his return to Apple and that event.
Unfortunately RJ assumed that the same retail qualities that had made Apple stores so successful would do the same for Penny’s. However, I don’t think he took into account the differences between those who shop at Penney’s and the typical Apple customer. In fact, the average discount attracted Penney’s shopper is less likely to be an Apple type customer. He needed a different plan at Penney’s and it looks to me he tried a variation of the same one he used at Apple. He also jumped in at 100% of the stores, which Apple didn’t usually do for major changes. He might be the best Apple can do right now. I guess he is one of the few retail executives out there who can “think different”. I had hoped Apple could find someone even better but after so long and the B failure, it looks unlikely.
People forget how long it took for Jobs to turn Apple around. Jobs was sick in the hospital with the illness that ultimately killed him when he sent an e-mail to Apple employees that the company was finally debt free.
Let that sink in for a minute.
Ron Johnson was not given a fair chance. What happened is that the bozos decided to embrace the failure they knew rather than step into a vision that could recast the company for the future.
Fail fast and take the cash.
Myron Ullman, former JCP CEO replaced by RJ, is back in the saddle…at least for now.
Ron Johnson tried to pull an “Apple” on Penny’s. He tried to rebrand a store that has historically catered to customers who only care about price. That strategy was doomed from the start because—guess what?—customers who only care about price only care about price. 😀
Don’t they call them PC users?
A disaster anyone should have seen coming. Who thought someone running a premium electronics retail store could run a discounter department store? Might as well just have hired the CEO of Nordstroms of Tiffany and Co. That would have been an equal disaster.
Die fast and hard, or die slow and sick?
I was in JCP today. I had watched with interest the changes that Johnson would bring to the store. The JCP I shop at is completely different 1.5 years after Johnson took over. Store within a store, cashier’s area are gone with people ready to serve on mobile devices. Heck, the prices are great too. If you like name-brand clothing, and want to have fair pricing, JCP has it for you.
Problem is Ron never got a chance to see the vision come to fruition, and the customers were the major problem. They moved the cheese nobody wanted moved. Sears and JCP seem to have the Walmart mind-set customers. Price, price, price, and get me the best price.
Thanks. That was my experience, finding nicer clothing at decent prices, without coupons, or clutter, and attentive sales clerks using Apple devices with efficiency—all contributing to a positive shopping experience.
JCP’s buyers seemed more fashion-savvy and discerning, and they turned inventory so quickly I regretted not buying smart apparel I had admired only a week previously.
The new CEO would, I think, be wise not to injudiciously jettison all the improvements. He should conduct customer surveys, not react in panic to abstract market valuations as the board of directors evidently has done.
Curious what age group demographic you are in. I’m 44. The Millennial Generation probably appreciates the changes, while the older generation likes the previous model.
In my trips to JC Penney stores over the last year or so, I have spotted many people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and a scattering of 50s and 60s. I myself am somewhere in that mix. Their print advertising and their television commercials target the 18-45 demographic group.
My theory is this: I think they made inroads in attracting a new cadre of consumers, and the old one (predominantly aging coupon-cutters) drifted away to the more cut-rate stores. A complete change-up like the one Ron Johnson tried requires a bit of time to get established, and the nervous nellies on the BOD backed down too soon.
JCP may have a future if they stay the course and develop their new audience. The alternative is to follow the likes of Montgomery Ward into the dustbin of retail sales history.
What I find to be really strange is that they have replaced him with the same CEO he replaced. You know, the guy who was already running JCP into the ground and wasn’t willing to make any attempts at changing their retail model.
I doubt that he has the vision to continue to guide Johnson’s retail experiment to completion. If he does come back in and jettisons Johnson’s attempts at change, then JCP is done. That will alienate the new customers that the new model began to attract, and the old customers that were afraid of the new model won’t likely come back.
A very strange choice by the board.