The other night, I was tempted to do what I haven’t done in ages: Buy something from JC Penney.
I was in the store to check out JCP’s new retail strategy, which went into effect earlier this month when the store did away with the things that excite shoppers most. Sales.
JCP — as it now likes to be called — cut prices at least 40 percent throughout their stores and installed a new pricing plan:
• Everyday prices, which are accompanied by red stickers.
• Monthlong values, which are accompanied by white stickers and currently include a $30 twin comforter set and a $225 turquoise cuff bracelet.
• Best prices, which basically mean clearance items that get marked down the first and third Friday of every month.
JCP calls it a “fair and square” price plan and has a new logo — a square — to reflect this.
JCP has also pledged to update its stores and make them less cluttered and more shoppable.
If anyone can turn nothing into something, it’s Ron Johnson. He’s the retailer’s new CEO and the guy who made Apple stores into entertainment destinations. Before that, he was senior vice president for merchandising at Target, another retailer known for its sense of vibrancy.
“I would describe JC Penney as one of a handful of great American brands that had been a great part of the fabric of America for almost a century, but it just wasn’t modern,” Johnson told The Associated Press.
I started my visit to JCP on the ground floor of the store at the Oakland Mall in Troy, Mich.
The women’s sleepwear department — where I was tempted — was tidy. The bra department was positively pristine, organized and roomy enough to navigate easily.
Then I went upstairs into the women’s clothing department and felt lost in a maze of racks, though I found wool- blend pea coats for $20!
And then I wondered if this JCP redo is going to be enough to bring the store, which its own CEO says has become irrelevant, back to life.
“They’ve done this just to overhaul everything and to be different,” said Michael Bernacchi, a University of Detroit-Mercy marketing expert. The question is “whether the different is going to work since they let things go for quite awhile.”
And while their immediate change — different prices — got me inside, Bernacchi points out that I still didn’t buy anything.
“The name of the game is return shoppers and return buying,” Bernacchi said.
And for me, JCP isn’t there yet.
Georgea Kovanis is the shopping writer and columnist at The Detroit Free Press. To reach her: 313-222-6842 or gkovanis@freepress.com.
