While last week’s announced closings of 78 Sears Holdings stores made headlines, the company has been quietly culling retail locations for years. But a new analysis of the department store sector concludes that Sears and other mall mainstays are far from finished with eliminating stores. [More]
JCPenney
JCPenney Launching New Plus-Size Line In New “Boutique” Sections In Stores, Online
By 4.13.16
While JCPenney has been selling plus-size garments for years, the retail chain is ready to make a big move into the fashion category: it’s launching a private label plus-size brand for women called Boutique+. [More]
JCPenney Wants To Bring Current Customers Back More Often, Maybe Also Find New Ones
By 2.24.16
Marvin Ellison, the CEO of JCPenney, understands something important about the retailer that his predecessor Ron Johnson didn’t: they’re never going to attract affluent customers, and that’s okay. “We can convince ourselves that our core customers are a more affluent demographic, but really, they’re not,” he told Fortune magazine in a profile this week. [More]
JCPenney Will Actually Be Selling Some Items For A Penny
By 2.24.16
Not so long ago, JCPenney was pushing the idea of “No More Sales,” hoping to attract shoppers with everyday low prices. That didn’t work, and now the retailer is going in the completely opposite direction with upcoming promotions where it intends to sell things for just a single penny. [More]
Burberry Sues JCPenney Over Coats In Familiar-Looking Plaid
By 2.9.16
Do you recognize Burberry’s distinctive plaid on sight? The British company assumes that most clothing shoppers do, and has filed a lawsuit against JCPenney for using a similar plaid in scarves and coats that it has sold recently. [More]
JCPenney Testing Appliance Sales By Creating An “Emotional Connection” With Women
By 1.19.16
Nearly 30 years after JCPenney discontinued selling ovens, refrigerators, washers, and the like, the retailer is once again dipping its toes into the appliance business, this time with a focus on targeting female shoppers. [More]
JCPenney Closing 7 Stores By Mid-April
By 1.13.16
History appears to be repeating itself at JCPenney this week. Just days after the retailer announced its same-store sales were up through the holiday season, the company tempered that good news by unveiling plans to close several stores… again. [More]
Predictions About Bad Weather Hurting Retailers Didn’t Come True At JCPenney
By 1.7.16
For most of the season that we would normally call “winter,” retail prognosticators have predicted poor sales at department stores and clothing stores, since people don’t go shopping for winter coats when it’s still warm enough to go outside in a T-shirt. Now the unusually warm weather is over, though: how did retailers fare? In the case of JCPenney, not as badly as anticipated. [More]
JCPenney Offers Virtual Reality Flight With Santa, Reindeer, And Product Placements
By 12.14.15
When we were kids, we had to go to a holiday-centric theme park to have an immersive experience with Santa, his reindeer, and his elves. If an experiment at JCPenney is successful, children of the future will only need to visit a local department store and plop an Oculus headset on their heads to experience the magic of flying in Santa’s sleigh while JCPenney suppliers advertise to them. [More]
Which Stores Will Have The Best Black Friday Deals?
By 11.17.15
How do you quantify what the “best” deals are, on Black Friday or any other day of the year? The most important factor should be whether the retailer sells stuff that you actually want, of course, and the value that those items provide for the money. Yet the sport of deal-hunting is all about the discounts, and WalletHub decided to compile raw percentages to figure out the best places to shop after Thanksgiving this year. [More]
JCPenney To Refund Customers $50M In False Advertising Settlement
By 11.11.15
JCPenney is putting a class-action lawsuit accusing the retailer of violating consumer protection laws by using deceptive discount practices behind it. [More]
JCPenney Has Lots Of Data On Shoppers, Isn’t Using It For Anything
By 10.28.15
The new CEO of JCPenney, a chain of department stores that had a brief and disastrous attempt at becoming more hip and upscale, says that the company is done “patching holes” in its business, and that it’s time to start building itself up for the future. That includes something that retailers now generally take for granted: using its customer data to sell more stuff to the customers that it has. [More]
JCPenney’s New CEO Plans To Reuse His Home Depot Strategy
By 6.11.15
JCPenney hasn’t had a chief executive officer since chairman Myron Ullman sacked re-vamper Ron Johnson back in 2013. Last fall, they found a candidate who was up for the challenge: Marvin Ellison, who was in charge of Home Depot’s stores in the United States, and worked for Target before that. He reported to work as president and CEO-designee in November 2014, and takes over on August 1. This week, he spoke at an investment banking conference about his future plans for the company. [More]
Lawsuit Over JCPenney’s Alleged Imaginary Discounts Receives Class Action Status
By 5.19.15
A class-action lawsuit that accuses JCPenney’s of violating consumer protection laws by using deceptive discount practices received the go-ahead from a federal judge on Tuesday. [More]
JCPenney Executive Accidentally E-Mails Sales Figures To Stock Analyst
By 4.14.15
Here’s a bit of cheery news about a venerable American retailer: JCPenney’s comparable store sales as calculated so far for the first quarter were up 6% over last year. Unfortunately, the reason why we know this is somewhat less cheery. Someone described as a “senior official” at the company accidentally e-mailed early figures that weren’t yet public for the first quarter of 2015 to a securities analyst. [More]
More Retailers Are Using Print Catalogs To Drive Online Sales
By 1.26.15
Last week, JCPenney announced that part of its comeback strategy is to…bring back its print catalogs. That seems counterintuitive when more people are shopping online, but it isn’t. JCPenney and Restoration Hardware aren’t alone in bringing back catalogs printed on dead trees. Only they aren’t the catalogs that you might have used in 1987: they’re glossy branded magazines. [More]
Hallmark Planning Mini-Stores Inside JCPenney Locations
By 1.22.15
After a year of discussions and a pilot program in 15 stores, JCPenney and Hallmark are pleased to announced that they might be moving in together. Well, sort of. Hallmark mini-stores may join Sephora and Disney mini-stores inside hundreds of JCPenney locations across the country. [More]
JCPenney Revives Print Catalog Because People Use It To Shop Online
By 1.19.15
In general, your mailbox probably contains fewer catalogs than it used to. Retailer JCPenney killed off their dead-tree division back in 2010, choosing to follow American shoppers online. Or so they thought. The company is bringing back a catalog filled with housewares after learning that the print catalog actually led to more online sales. [More]
