Good morning. Fortune senior writer Phil Wahba here, filling in for Alan.
It’s amazing how much traction a corporate turnaround can gain when a CEO decides to root the plan in excelling at a company’s basics rather than trying to dazzle everyone with flashy moves. Take J.C. Penney. In the decade leading up to its bankruptcy protection filing in 2020, the department store had lurched from one reinvention to the next, yet none stanched the years-long sales slide and market share erosion.
Remember when Ron Johnson of Apple fame tried to make Penney cool with fancier brands and by ditching coupons? Or how Penney desperately chased millennials—considered young at the time—even though its core shopper was a suburban mom, and then, out of the blue, entered categories like big-ticket appliances?
