Apologies for the load-bearing pun before lunch, but there is it: Ron Johnson is leaving Apple to become CEO of JC Penney.
Well, if anybody can make something of them, it’s him. Apple’s retail stores were dismissed as a bad joke and a sure sign of impending doom…until they opened. Now they’re generally the most profitable square footage of any mall in which they open. Ron Johnson deserves as much credit as Himself or Jonny Ive for the stonking great decade turned in by the fruitmonger of Cupertino.
But now…
This is going to be interesting. It’s been hard for me to avoid the impression that the middle sector of American retail has been hollowed out. JCP is an afterthought at best, Sears is going out of business right left and center, all the old mall anchor stores of my youth are disappearing back East. The mid-range retail space is being gutted in favor of big-box and discount retailers at one end and posh expensive stuff at the other. There’s nothing really bridging the gap between Target and Nordstrom – oh, you could make a case for Macy’s, I suppose, but Macy’s West was never positioned like Macy’s nationally, at least based on what I understood from the wife’s description of the old days. I guess Belk is sort of in that space now back in the South.
The point is, it’s not just retail. Look at air travel – your choices are essentially between business/first class and Southwest, in terms of amenities and luxury. Look at mobile phones – you’re either splashing out for a smartphone or buying a $20 burner prepaid talk-and-text at 7-Eleven. It’s difficult to pitch a middle-of-the-road product anymore; you either have to offer amazing or cheap.
I assume that Ron will attempt to take JCP upmarket a little. Some reinvention, some redesign, some more well-known brands – he was, after all, a big part of the reinvention of Target as the “upscale” big-box retailer (relative to Wal-Mart or K-Mart). He takes over in November, so I’ll be curious to see if they come up with anything in time for Black Friday and the Christmas sale season…but for 2012 and beyond, I wouldn’t bet against him.