Derek Thompson at The Atlantic asks, “Who killed JCPenney?”:
“The Worst Quarter In Retail History.”
That’s how Henry Blodget described JC Penney’s last three months of 2012, as same-store sales took an epic 32 percent nosedive. To be clear about exactly what a disaster that is, it means that for every $100 dollars JC Penney sold in a store around Christmas 2011, it sold only $68 in that store in Christmas 2012. That doesn’t look like the beginning of the end for JC Penney. That just looks like the end.
Thompson talks about the economic trends that spelled doom for JCP. I don’t know about economics, but I do know that it’s strange, in an emotional sense, for me to see so many of the iconic retailers from my childhood fall by the wayside. I couldn’t tell you the last time I shopped at Penney’s. Probably when my mom took me there as a kid. Sears was the big retail presence in our family’s life in the 1970s. I went to a Sears store for the first time in decades last fall, looking for a kid’s coat, and I was shocked by how depressing and low-rent everything looked. This is not a store that has life in it, I thought.
Montgomery Ward used to be a big part of my childhood too. It died a while back.
I don’t have anything philosophical or insightful to say about these places. They died in part because people like me quit shopping there, for whatever reason. Still, I get a little sentimental when I see news that JCPenney is in serious trouble. It’s like hearing that your childhood Sunday school teacher or your Little League coach, someone you haven’t seen in 30 years, but who once meant a lot to you, is in hospice care.
Paul Emmons 
sandy 
>my husband marvelled at the dearth of consumers (fewer than the eight cashier-staffed aisles) at a national grocery retailer starting with “A”
I may know the one you’re referring to. In this town, too, the A supermarket does much less business than the S supermarket about 1/4 mile away. I don’t know why this is now, unless the prices are significantly different, but I have a theory as to how it got that way: when first moving here more than 25 years ago, I was struck by how long a customer often had to wait in line at their checkout counters No subsequent experience dispelled this impression for two decades.
Just a passing acquaintance with queuing theory suffices to appreciate that this will happen if a manager’s only objective is to shave every penny off costs according to a mathematical formula. But it’s penny-wise and pound foolish considering customer satisfaction. Here we are standing with our wallets open, for Pete’s sake, and the store doesn’t seem to care either about us or our money. Putting just one more cashier on duty would almost eliminate the waiting. Is my time of zero value? I refuse to be the chronic victim of such a policy for a very small gain.
This thoughtlessness is so annoying that I have once or twice walked away from a full cart of groceries in the check-out area and left the store, out of sheer pique and protest. If enough other people did this, the bean counters would need to reconsider their calculations and maybe get the message. If they don’t solve the problem, it will solve itself: we customers will desert them for convenience stores and other competitors less happy to waste our time.
Re this particular “A” store, I’m happy to say that it has recently changed for the better, and I now enjoy shopping there more than in the “S” store. The checkout lanes have more modern and efficient equipment. The clerks are friendly and seem really interested in prompt processing. The entire atmosphere is more elegant. It may be too little too late, though. After letting one of them know that I like it here now (and why), she said that “nobody” comes in anymore.
If Penny’s or Sears’ departments remind Jaybird of 1978, that’s a good recommendation
Unfortunately, there are no stores of either brand within a 5 mile radius, but I will not lose a chance to try them when it’s convenient. The appliances and similar hardware sold in Sears, as well as their home improvement services, continue to have a good reputation among practical people. Montgomery Ward went bottom-up partly due to top management whose corruption quite predictably trickled down into the whole corporate culture. Sears and Penny’s may be more undeserving victims of changing conditions. But it’s strange nevertheless. These are companies whose business was originally built on remote sales via catalogs and mail-order. Retail stores in general are now challenged by enterprises using essentially this same model, the only difference being the Internet. Why aren’t these two venerable companies in a good position to flourish nowadays by just returning to their roots?