Retail Roundup: JC Penney to debut the “Shops” in August; Sam’s Club to see $2 million in renovations
An example of an Arizona Shop at JC Penney. Photo courtesy of JC Penney
Work is under way at the Valley View and Tanglewood JC Penney stores to reorganize the way brand items are displayed.
Large sections of the stores are cordoned off with white tarps as the store rearranges displays to group brand name items together into “shops.”
The Roanoke-area stores will see shops dedicated to Levi’s, The Original Arizona Jean Co. and iJeans by Buffalo, according to a JC Penney spokeswoman.
The shops are set to debut in Roanoke on Aug. 1.
The shops are part of the company’s efforts to reinvent the store, a strategy that includes a three-tiered pricing method in place of sales, a new logo, a new marketing initiative, and the introduction of new brands, including a JCP brand for men and women that will be in stores this fall.
The changes haven’t proven successful so far.
JC Penney lost $163 million in the quarter that ended April 28, or 75 cents a share, compared to a profit of $64 million in the same quarter last year. (When taking into account the cost of restructuring, the adjusted loss was $55 million, or 25 cents a share, the company reported.)
Also in the column, Sam’s Club has filed plans with the city of Roanoke for a $2 million renovation of its Towne Square Shopping Center warehouse store.
Work includes remodeling the cafe, optical department, pharmacy and photo lab; restriping and resealing the parking lot; hanging new signs outside the store; and replacing cart corrals, according to a building permit filed with the city.
The renovations also will make room for a new hearing center, said Mark Scott, a spokesman for Sam’s Club.
The renovations are still being planned, and Scott said start and finish dates have not been set.
The store will remain open during the work, he said.
Sam’s Club’s sister store, meanwhile, also will see renovations.
Work is scheduled to begin at the Walmart at Valley View in September. Those plans include cleaning and painting exterior and interior walls, pharmacy, customer service area, vision center and entryways, and refurbishing the restrooms and auto center, according to plans submitted to the city. The plans also call for installing new signs and repairing or replacing doors and floor tile.
July 23, 2012 - 6:00 AM
JCP hires a new CEO. He reinvents the wheel. JCP looses hundreds of millions. Six months later he is gone with a pocket full of cash. Probably one of the worst business decisions ever.
Also, JC Penney stock has dropped from 42 on the day of their announced reorganization, to the range of 20 now.
One other note, JC Penney CEO Ron Johnson just announced that JCP will ‘do away with checkout cashiers’ in favor of self checkout by customers. So there’s a lot of jobs that will be cut while JCP continues to implode.
http://www.bizjournals.com/cincinnati/morning_call/2012/07/jcpenney-cutting-out-cashiers.html?ana=yfcpc
I no longer shop at JCPenney and will continue to not shop there, despite any further marketing. Until they realize that the coupon works, they’re going to continue losing.
I’m glad to hear Sam’s Club is undergoing a renovation! I rarely go in there, but when I do it feels and looks really dated and uninviting. I guess I shouldn’t expect much from a warehouse, lol
As for the Valley View Walmart … ugh. What’s that saying? Put lipstick on a pig and … it’s still a pig? That Walmart scares me. Literally. I’d much rather drive the extra distance to Bonsack or Clearbrook to avoid the people that go to Valley View.
I’m moving to the Roanoke Valley eventually and am there on the weekends now. As much as I can’t stand our Virginia Tech crowd at Walmart up here, I’d much prefer them to the crowd at Valley View Walmart.
How many jeans “shops” do you need? They should have a Sephora shop at Valley View.
I agree totally Elle. The Walmart at Valley View is a mess and the people that go there are scary!! 220 Walmart much nicer. Don’t know what it is about the VV Walmart that attracts such a rough crowd. Yiu go to Target AND THE MALL AREA and don’t see what you see at Walmart.
I still shop at JCP and have much more consistently under their new pricing strategy. I dont want to have to deal with Coupons and going in there just to find out that I could have waited a week and gotten something half price. Most of their prices now in my opinion are where they need to be to make it affordable for myself and my family. They have some of the best Big and Tall stuff around for the price. Not bowled away at some of the kids prices but in Mens it has been great. I hate that their stock has not been great and hope they can rebound but I personally love the new pricing strategy. As for the Sams Club I am in there every week and it drastically needs an update so I look forward to that. The Valley View Walmart is a dark hole that I will not step foot in, just hop on 81 and zip over to Salem I will gladly make that trek or stop in Clearbrook.
I was in Penney’s Saturday, told my husband I was not impressed with Penney’s any more. I use to do alot of shopping there, now I head to Belk.
The overwhelming consumer response to the JCP strategy was been very negative. I think most of their former shoppers that can have moved their business elsewhere, whether slightly upscale to Belk-type stores, or laterally, to stores like Target & WalMart, etc. The JCP brand used to mean quality as a reasonable price. Now it means poor quality, low cost driven merchandise.
Folks might want to reconsider whether buying a $12 shirt every other year is really preferable to buying a $30 shirt once every 5-6 years. I know the story is different for growing children, but for adults, it seems a no-brainer.
Wow, Elle. You sound like a lot of fun to be around.
Why are people shocked that VV Walmart has shady people there all the time, it serves the most dense area of poor and uneducated people this side of the state. Think about all the fights, stabbings, shootings at that Wal-mart and the Ihop accross the street.
cr, that Folks might want to reconsider whether buying a $12 shirt every other year is really preferable to buying a $30 shirt once every 5-6 years. strategy is why I now just buy shirts at thrift shops for $3.50, sometimes less if I catch a bag sale or half-off sale somewhere. And quite often, the shirts are brand-spanking new with the tags still on, or are so lightly used they look new. I simply don’t buy dress slacks, dress shirts, polos, suits, or ties at regular stores any longer…I can save 80-90% or more the way I get stuff. And I’m talking brands like Izod, Van Heusen, Eddie Bauer, Jos. A Banks, etc…
I haven’t shopped at a JC Penney since 2004, when we got a gift card for our wedding.
While I could afford to shop at a department store, why on earth would I? Even if I don’t buy from a thrift shop, Ross & TJ Maxx have the same stuff at a pretty sizeable discount. About the only clothing I buy brand new are jeans, undergarments, and socks…and Walmart does a fine job with those.
The Walmart at Valley View it run down. It has a run down Ghetto look and feel to it. It’s need a lot of love, TLC and clean up. Do they have any plans to clean up the outside and the entry way for a more improved curb appeal? I want to see the Tanglewood area become a new thriving shopping district again. The Tanglewood area is much nicer than Valley View area, but the traffic in front of Tangle wood will become a much bigger issue. Yet, Valley View Mall is a nice mall. I recently visited CrabTree Mall in Raliegh and this mall is awesome and worth the drive to Raliegh.
I for one miss the old Penney’s, much better deals. As for doing away with checkouts, they already have poor customer service now it will be worse. Are they trying to go out of business?
Coupons are a nightmare for retailers and they simply mean you are shopping only what they put on sale, not
what is actually good merchandise. That says a lot more about the person who’s clinging to the coupon rather than the quality of the store. You’ll actually find virtually ALL merchandisers moving away from deep discounts, coupons and other non-stop initiatives in the next year or two. All they have been was a way to deal with the sudden shift in the economy. As all retailers adjust their internal costs to produce, buy and distribute they no longer need to cut the consumer price so drastically. Think of it as a really bad habit, like fast food. You can’t sustain an empty calorie diet for too long…and what people are ignoring is that they actually are improving their product. Open your minds a little. There’s an old adage – “You get what you pay for” and if it’s too cheap…it means your buying stuff that doesn’t last.
Excuse my wording, OJ. I ‘ll also add the caveat that I understand you are ultra-thrift with your household budget by choice, one I respect. The point I intended to state was that buying a cheap shirt for $12, or whatever price, might save money on the acquisition cost, but in the long run, the shirt wears out quicker and must be replaced when a quality shirt ends up being less expensive over the life of the garment.
Some uninformed shoppers expected the JCP price slashes to result in huge % savings on the same quality merchandise, which is just ridiculous. As horribly managed as JCP is, even they wouldn’t do that. As we have seen, going to ‘traditional’ venues for cheap clothing means you get to buy cheap clothing far more often than quality clothing, wherever that might be sourced.
cr, I totally understand what you were going for…it’s a viewpoint I hold in most aspects of life: cheap cost doesn’t usually make up for cruddy quality if you have to replace something regularly…the life-cycle costs don’t add up.
I’ve noticed this with clothing, appliances, electronics, cars, etc. Yeah, you can save some money up front, but if you replace it every 2-3 years(or have substantial repair bills) versus every 5-6 or less frequently, are you really saving money? Nope. And that’s part of why I shifted my clothes buying, because the quality just isn’t there most times, even for more expensive items.
@tass: Oh, I’m super lots of fun! Just voicing my opinion – like everyone else.
Opinions are like a-holes, eh?
@Other John: Totally agree on thrift shop buys for clothes. Great brands, good quality, amazing deals, supporting places like Goodwill … I enjoy shopping there.
I was over at the JC Penney at Mercer Mall in Bluefield, WV a week ago, and they are currently doing the same transformation as Valley View and Tanglewood transforming their departments into shops such as Arizona, St. John’s Bay, Stafford, etc.
Looking at the planned changes, it appears that JCP has learned nothing from their most recent fiasco. Multiple pretend ‘shops’, like the consumer is SOO stupid they will wander around thinking they’re traipsing from one upscale boutique to another? Seriously?
So… I want to buy a pair of jeans. I have to go to three different sections of the store to see the full offering from JCP? Do they really think I’m THAT locked into only buying Arizona jeans, that even if Levi’s are on sale, I won’t go into the fake ‘Levi’s Shoppe’ to see if a pair of jeans on sale for $2 more than the cheap quality Arizona jeans might be worth a buy? Or is it that they want to force me to waste my time wandering around the store in search of supposed bargains?
That doesn’t even take into account the fact that not all – for example, Levi’s 501 jeans – are the same quality level. I said it at the beginning, and I’ll repeat it – JC Penney has flushed themselves down the toilet, and they are only out to pull money from people while selling them inferior products. I consider anyone who buys anything from them to be fools. They’re cheating their customers each & every day.
Work continues at JC Penney – I just saw this building permit for phase two at Valley View, which includes creating Liz and Izod shops.
Um, Local Color, you’re contradicting yourself. First you say that coupons aren’t necessary because retailers are reducing their costs to provide lower prices every day, then you say if something’s cheap it’s not worth buying. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that if you buy something with a coupon that is regularly priced higher that you’re getting MORE than what you’re paying for? I understand that the quality may not be commensurate with the “regular price”, but aren’t you at least getting a price that’s closer to something that’s fair for the quality of the item? When items are “priced low every day” is when you can expect a lot of cheap crap… getting a coupon for an item that’s regularly priced higher often means you’re getting something that’s a step above “everyday bargains” at the same bargain price.
Seems to me that the JCP strategy has been to cut costs to the bone, and the reason they did away with sales and coupons is that there’s no longer any more room to discount what is already bottom-level merchandise.