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Stories

Stories

26 Oct 2015

Ron Johnson’s Post-Penney’s Rebirth

Fast Company details Johnson’s new startup
Re: Ron Johnson (MBA 1984)
Topics: Outcome-FailureBusiness Ventures-Business StartupsPersonal Development-GeneralCareer-Managing Careers
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The November issue of Fast Company has a profile of Ron Johnson (MBA 1984)—former Apple retail guru and JC Penney CEO. Johnson’s now at the helm of a consumer electronics startup, Enjoy, that focuses on personal service interactions with customers. "What we’re trying to do is deliver unimagined customer experience," Johnson tells the magazine. "It’s better than a store, it’s the same price as online, and it’s faster than even Amazon Prime."

Johnson also recounts the story behind his 2013 exit from JC Penney:

The changes, bolstered by a dramatic new ad campaign starring Ellen DeGeneres that first aired during the Oscars, represented an elegant solution to the problem of rampant discounting, albeit one that none of the company’s customers, many of them coupon-loving senior citizens, had asked for. …"We insulted the core customer," he now admits.

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