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Jones Group to close 170 stores, cut workforce
New York -- The Jones Group Inc. announced Monday that it will put into action a series of events designed to shore up profitability, the most significant of which includes shuttering 170 underperforming stores in the U.S. by mid-2014.
The stores identified for closure include 50 units previously announced in the fourth quarter.
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J.C. Penney Lesson No. 1: Know Your Customer
By Leslie Hand, research director, IDC Retail Insights
Ron Johnson's highly publicized short tenure at J.C. Penney, or JCP, as it was rebranded, will certainly make it into the textbooks and graduate theses on what to do and what not to do when undertaking a significant retail business transformation. The primary failure was not putting customer needs first in what promised to be an excellent long term strategy. Oops — forget the customer in an omni-channel customer strategy?
What a colossal mistake!