JC Penney (JCP) recently ousted CEO Ron Johnson after just 17 months. The former Apple and Target guru faced an uphill battle from the start. He inherited a bloated company which was losing stock value at roughly 2% per year under its former CEO, Mike Ullman. Despite the dismal sales results, Johnson did accomplish some good at JCP. He upgraded many of the legacy systems, began to infuse the company with new technologies like RFID (although that particular project was scaled back) and began the transformation of the department-store philosophy into the stores-within-a-store model. This final project seemed to be taking hold, with the segmented “stores” outperforming other departments. However, this transformation was just beginning, and no one knows where it will go now. By Bob Johns, associate editor
