“I couldn’t find a greater upside opportunity where the financial downturn had been specifically driven by poor strategic decisions — not a disruptive competitor, not a change in the economic landscape,” Bloomberg News quotes from Ellison’s speech. (Warning: auto-play video) In other words: this was a rare opportunity to lead a retailer where the previous leadership had screwed things up, and not factors outside of the company’s control.
Ellison will use many of the same strategies that he did at Home Depot in the last two years, where he was in charge of a great turnaround. He will focus on making the experience of shopping at JCPenney a lot better for consumers, which includes:
- Shorter shipping times
- More employees helping customers
- More robust online sales
He wants to improve the interconnectedness of store inventories and the website, but at the same time make fewer corporate demands on managers so they can spend less time on paperwork, and more on their local employees and on customers.
One idea that wasn’t Ellison’s: reviving print catalogs, since customers like to use them to shop online.
J.C. Penney’s Next CEO Lays Out How Struggling Chain Can Thrive [Bloomberg] (Warning: auto-play video)
by Laura Northrup via Consumerist