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JC is Now a Penny Stock

Toys R Us when under because they borrowed a huge amount of money right before the 2008 recession. Sears and JCP and going under for poor management, they are often used in business schools of how not to manage a company, as well as refusal to innovate and adopt new technologies like the internet.

They never seemed to market to the younger customer, either. JCP and Sears were often in malls, and teens and young adults were the main demographic to aim for in the mall. They just seemed complacent with marketing towards grandmothers. Shame, too, because they have some cute clothes. They just suck at marketing.
 
Sears even marketed an automobile.

https://money.cnn.com/2017/06/13/autos/sears-motor-buggy/index.html

With engines that could crank out 10 horsepower, and in later years 14 horsepower, it could run at "any speed up to 25 miles an hour," the ads said.

"We don't believe that the average person wants to go whizzing along at 40 to 50 miles an hour," Sears proclaimed.

170323052437-sears-motor-buggy-780x439.jpg


170324093524-sears-catalog-history-motor-buggy-780x439.jpg
 
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I'd like to take just a second to acknowledge the ridiculousness of what's happened in America. Liberals were once strong advocates for American workers, even to the point of idolizing the communist party state in the USSR. Now liberals seem to say **** American workers and **** owning quality possessions.

'Buy Chinese, Work for Peanuts' is the modern DNC slogan for America.

Actually that is Reagan's slogan..."Profits are God" Buy low sell high and **** the workers, give'em cheap tube socks instead of raises. Most Americans can no longer afford American products, that's the sad state Reaganomics has put us in. On the bright side, CEO's now make 300 times what their workers do and profits are up up up.

Also you are living under a misconception if you think "collecting" is EVER to make money. Do it for enjoyment and expect to take a beating if you sell. Then you won't be disappointed. There is no more pathetic soul than a collector who counts his chickens.
 
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JCPenney should be penny stock, they are a textbook example of how not to run a company dealing with a recession.

From executive level mistakes, to handling debt, to handling branding all they did was error. And what should be a shock to no one, investors walked.
 
it's kind of weird to see the retail giants of my childhood reduced into ghosts of their former selves. i hope that some of them can find a way to keep kicking. however, as Stephen King says in the Dark Tower series, the world has moved on.
 
Shopping at JCP is an interesting experience. I still like their home decor department. Clothing, perhaps a more trendy selection would be nice. When one walks through the store, it seems that every section has different music, and LOUD. Not sure if other JCPs are like that.
May be I'm a relic, but I like to touch and look at things before I buy. Ordering online isn't for me. Stuff doesn't fit right, looks different than I expected. So I hope that brick and mortar will stay for a bit longer, at least until I'm old enough not to care whether I wear a robe or a muumuu.
 
Although my take may be unpopular here, it is nevertheless true. Sears and JC Penney have been given an unfair playing field by the government, which has allowed Amazon to deal in counterfeits for well over a decade. Sears and JC Penney have had to adhere to selling genuine merchandize, while Amazon has acted as a bazaar for illegal goods. They simply can't compete with the low prices that accompany these fakes.

Why the government allowed Jeff Bezos to build his empire off of pirated brands remains a mystery.

I don't think that's it. If that were true, why are Michael Kors and Kate Spade still in business? They do great business in China, where fakes are practically ingrained into the culture. The Amazon.com boogeyman gets blamed for the demise of seemingly every mom-and-pop and bricks-and-mortar enterprise in the country, and yet Amazon's sales comprise only about 4% of total U.S. retail sales. Fakes sold by the company would be a fraction of that, since Amazon.com uses the same supply chain as every other reputable retailer in the country. If there's a problem, it's in the Amazon Marketplace, which is basically Amazon's version of eBay. Even so, Sears' demise can be traced, I think, more to the convenience and pricing of firms such as Walmart, Ross Stores, TJMaxx, Target, Best Buy, Costco, Home Depot (in appliances), etc. that are not located in traditional shopping malls. People want price and convenience.

As far as the government giving an unfair advantage, one area that is a problem is the shipment of small packages from overseas at preferential postage rates. It's cheaper to ship from China than Toledo, and intercepting counterfeits is next to impossible because of the volume of goods entering the country. (One example: fentanyl, which is being fabricated into fake opioid pills and killing Americans by the thousands every year.) The Trump Administration is attempting to address this by removing the United States from International Postal Union (https://thehill.com/homenews/admini...ithdraw-from-international-postal-rate-system). Of course, this is all framed by the anti-Trumpers as part of the president's "hurtful trade wars." :roll:
 
The simple fact is these retailers didnt sell things people wanted in the way they wanted them. And theyre just an old business model, the dept store. Walmart won that war, and JCP kept dedicating more and more space to perfume and cosmetics and 'as seen on tv' products. Stuff you could get elsewhere, more conveniently for cheaper price. The mall is dead.
 
it's kind of weird to see the retail giants of my childhood reduced into ghosts of their former selves. i hope that some of them can find a way to keep kicking. however, as Stephen King says in the Dark Tower series, the world has moved on.

When I was a kid, we had a shopping district downtown. We had stores where you could buy tailored suits, dress shops, toy stores, local jewelers that made custom jewelry and had existed since the 19th Century or early 20th Century, restaurants with waitresses who'd worked in the same establishments for decades, shoe stores staffed with people who could tell you anything about any brand of shoes they sold and personally fit your shoes. All of the shoes were made in either America or Europe (principally Britain or Italy), some by Maine and Massachusetts shoemakers who could trace their family lineage in the business back generations. We even had a cobbler who could repair the shoes you bought. There were variety (five-and-dime) stores as well, such as Woolworth's, Kress, J.J. Newberry, and W.T Grant.

And then a mall anchored with Sears at one end and J.C. Penney at the other opened and that was the beginning of the end for the five-and-dimes and mom-and-pop stores downtown. The city tried to put lipstick on the downtown pig with nice planters and benches and by limiting vehicular traffic, to no avail. By this time as well (early to mid-1960s) discount department stores such as Kmart, Gemco, Fedmart, Unimart, and Zody's appeared on the scene. But the final nail in the coffin for downtowns all over Southern California came when huge regional malls with well-stocked, multi-level anchor department stores such as Bullock's, Robinson's, and May Co. opened. We had two single-screen movie theaters downtown, one owned by 20th Century Fox, the other by United Artists. The malls cornered that business, too, with multii-screen theaters operated by companies such as AMC. Soon after that the downtown theaters closed for good, but you could still catch Planet of the Apes at the AMC while the kids watched Blackbeard's Ghost on another screen. The 1980s and '90s saw the three or four-screen theaters balloon into huge multiplexes, some with ten or more screens. And what NOW? Malls, in an effort to stay relevant, are tearing down multiplexes and structures previously occupied by department stores such as Sears and creating upscale theaters that combine elements of the movie palaces of my youth with the multi-screen theaters of the 1960s-70s (Mall of America's replacement for movie theaters: More movie theaters). Go figure.

So basically what we see in the American retail experience, which has been a central part of our culture, is evolution. Some companies adapt, some don't. F.W. Woolworth, arguably the inventor of the downtown variety store, begrudgingly accepted the mall concept and managed to morph itself into Foot Locker, while W.T. Grant and J.J. Newberry clung to their downtown roots and eventually went bankrupt. Sears and J.C. Penney are just the latest examples of what happens when you don't change the times.
 
JCP and Sears ending their death spirals in the same year will be a belly punch to a lot of weaker malls, malls whos futures were already in great doubt.

Nobody really knows what will happen, but the fear is that many malls die soon.

That gets to be a spiritual problem for the communities around them.
 
When I was a kid, we had a shopping district downtown. We had stores where you could buy tailored suits, dress shops, toy stores, local jewelers that made custom jewelry and had existed since the 19th Century or early 20th Century, restaurants with waitresses who'd worked in the same establishments for decades, shoe stores staffed with people who could tell you anything about any brand of shoes they sold and personally fit your shoes. All of the shoes were made in either America or Europe (principally Britain or Italy), some by Maine and Massachusetts shoemakers who could trace their family lineage in the business back generations. We even had a cobbler who could repair the shoes you bought. There were variety (five-and-dime) stores as well, such as Woolworth's, Kress, J.J. Newberry, and W.T Grant.

And then a mall anchored with Sears at one end and J.C. Penney at the other opened and that was the beginning of the end for the five-and-dimes and mom-and-pop stores downtown. The city tried to put lipstick on the downtown pig with nice planters and benches and by limiting vehicular traffic, to no avail. By this time as well (early to mid-1960s) discount department stores such as Kmart, Gemco, Fedmart, Unimart, and Zody's appeared on the scene. But the final nail in the coffin for downtowns all over Southern California came when huge regional malls with well-stocked, multi-level anchor department stores such as Bullock's, Robinson's, and May Co. opened. We had two single-screen movie theaters downtown, one owned by 20th Century Fox, the other by United Artists. The malls cornered that business, too, with multii-screen theaters operated by companies such as AMC. Soon after that the downtown theaters closed for good, but you could still catch Planet of the Apes at the AMC while the kids watched Blackbeard's Ghost on another screen. The 1980s and '90s saw the three or four-screen theaters balloon into huge multiplexes, some with ten or more screens. And what NOW? Malls, in an effort to stay relevant, are tearing down multiplexes and structures previously occupied by department stores such as Sears and creating upscale theaters that combine elements of the movie palaces of my youth with the multi-screen theaters of the 1960s-70s (Mall of America's replacement for movie theaters: More movie theaters). Go figure.

So basically what we see in the American retail experience, which has been a central part of our culture, is evolution. Some companies adapt, some don't. F.W. Woolworth, arguably the inventor of the downtown variety store, begrudgingly accepted the mall concept and managed to morph itself into Foot Locker, while W.T. Grant and J.J. Newberry clung to their downtown roots and eventually went bankrupt. Sears and J.C. Penney are just the latest examples of what happens when you don't change the times.

i grew up during the tail end of the same era. some of the late 19th century buildings have survived. GM, which was a big employer, is gone, and we went through some rough years. however, we've had a bit of a resurgence in the past ten years. i hope that it continues and that my hometown can preserve as many of the old buildings as possible.
 
When I was a kid, we had a shopping district downtown. We had stores where you could buy tailored suits, dress shops, toy stores, local jewelers that made custom jewelry and had existed since the 19th Century or early 20th Century, restaurants with waitresses who'd worked in the same establishments for decades, shoe stores staffed with people who could tell you anything about any brand of shoes they sold and personally fit your shoes. All of the shoes were made in either America or Europe (principally Britain or Italy), some by Maine and Massachusetts shoemakers who could trace their family lineage in the business back generations. We even had a cobbler who could repair the shoes you bought. There were variety (five-and-dime) stores as well, such as Woolworth's, Kress, J.J. Newberry, and W.T Grant.

And then a mall anchored with Sears at one end and J.C. Penney at the other opened and that was the beginning of the end for the five-and-dimes and mom-and-pop stores downtown. The city tried to put lipstick on the downtown pig with nice planters and benches and by limiting vehicular traffic, to no avail. By this time as well (early to mid-1960s) discount department stores such as Kmart, Gemco, Fedmart, Unimart, and Zody's appeared on the scene. But the final nail in the coffin for downtowns all over Southern California came when huge regional malls with well-stocked, multi-level anchor department stores such as Bullock's, Robinson's, and May Co. opened. We had two single-screen movie theaters downtown, one owned by 20th Century Fox, the other by United Artists. The malls cornered that business, too, with multii-screen theaters operated by companies such as AMC. Soon after that the downtown theaters closed for good, but you could still catch Planet of the Apes at the AMC while the kids watched Blackbeard's Ghost on another screen. The 1980s and '90s saw the three or four-screen theaters balloon into huge multiplexes, some with ten or more screens. And what NOW? Malls, in an effort to stay relevant, are tearing down multiplexes and structures previously occupied by department stores such as Sears and creating upscale theaters that combine elements of the movie palaces of my youth with the multi-screen theaters of the 1960s-70s (Mall of America's replacement for movie theaters: More movie theaters). Go figure.

So basically what we see in the American retail experience, which has been a central part of our culture, is evolution. Some companies adapt, some don't. F.W. Woolworth, arguably the inventor of the downtown variety store, begrudgingly accepted the mall concept and managed to morph itself into Foot Locker, while W.T. Grant and J.J. Newberry clung to their downtown roots and eventually went bankrupt. Sears and J.C. Penney are just the latest examples of what happens when you don't change the times.

Really, people are just going to be staying home. No need to go to a theater or any store. Do everything from home, get it delivered. Return it if you dont like it. Physical stores will be going bust for anything from showrooms.
 
Hang on. Sears sold entire houses?

They sure did. It's a really cool, well built home that has great finishes and wood work.Everything was included.

There are several on my street and last count was around 18 in town. If you google sears kit houses you'll see all of the designs, from humble to grand houses.


Happy New Year.
 
SEARS should have sat up and paid attention when Montgomery Ward went tits up in 2001.

I am collecting SS and I can count on one hand the times i have been inside one of JCP stores.

Anyone remember E.J. Korvettes?
 
Yeah, well, maybe, but then they could do that in 2018 and yet the U.S box office set a record. So I don't see theaters going by the wayside anytime soon.

2018 Box Office Sets Domestic Annual Record With Over $11.38 Billion

But thats in dollars. How many tickets are sold? Whats their growth? What percentage of people are going vs staying home? Look at all the original movies being made on streaming services now that never even go to theatres. Really, they just have a monopoly on certain movies, thats why they do business. A theatre is the only place to see a brand new blockbuster.
 
OK I'll bite. Now give me a reason to believe a word you say. What "counterfeits" are Amazon profiting with? Please include sales numbers and profits realized. Amazon is publicly traded and all those things are available so no waffling.

Don't bother.
His sources are obviously the 'scare old people emails' that are digested by gullible people.
 
But thats in dollars. How many tickets are sold? Whats their growth? What percentage of people are going vs staying home? Look at all the original movies being made on streaming services now that never even go to theatres. Really, they just have a monopoly on certain movies, thats why they do business. A theatre is the only place to see a brand new blockbuster.

Not really. If you wait a week or two you can usually get a good-quality pirated version (i.e., one without the Chinese subtitles :doh) using a Fire Stick or similar device. In my case, I don't watch pirated movies. I have Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime, Vudu, Movies Anywhere, Disney Movie Club, Direct TV--all of that crap. And yet I still go to the theater. It's not that I can't wait. I just still enjoy getting out of the house with my wife. In fact, we're going today to a Premiere Cinemas theater in Biloxi to see Aquaman, which already has world-wide box office northward of three-quarters of a billion dollars. Afterwords, we'll probably stop at an ice cream shop or similar establishment, making it a sort of date. The experience with the sound, screen, and seating in a modern digital 2d or 3d theater is difficult and expensive to replicate in a home. The reclining seats with electric adjustable headrests and lumbar supports themselves cost thousands of dollars. And just try recreating an Imax experience in your house. It's impossible.

But, yeah, I'm sure alternatives such as home theater systems coupled with digital services are eating into theater attendance, but don't hold your breath waiting for them to die.
 
JC Penny decided to become the junk jewelry store some years ago for the huge margin of profit. Didn't work out for them. All stores had junk costume jewelry.

Yeah, 14k gold plating on brass. :doh
 
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