So… Here’s another rant on J.C. Penney.
OK. We KNOW the company is a TRAIN WRECK right now.
This latest attempt to alter what we in retail call “EDLP” or every day low pricing (where everything is a $0.99 or $0.97 price point), BACK to a mark-up to mark-down policy is is a joke. It demeans the very consumer they so wanted to target.
I was on the earnings call when JCP CEO Ron Johnson spent about 10 minutes saying how differentiated $JCP was, because they would “NEVER mark-up to mark-down”, and that JCP “didn’t have to do that “because of the strength of their stable of brands and the unique merchandising plan the company was implementing.” Oh, how the mighty have fallen! This is basically a tacit admission that “yeah, we screwed up and have no idea what we are doing, and the customer didn’t get it either.”
Customers will forgive a lot, but they won’t forget you insulting their intelligence (or lack thereof).
This is just another nail in the coffin for Ron Johnson and JCP. Like I said before, if he was ANY OTHER CEO without the “Apple HALO”, he would be on a beach somewhere.