Silicon Valley’s failure to translate

It’s astonishing that the high-tech Apple guy, and all his ex-Apple recruits at JCPenney (some 5 of them with titles of SVP or better), didn’t implement some killer retail ideas that have emerged in recent years from the tech world. We’ll look at these in a minute, but first maybe we should ask, “Can the company be saved?”

The market dipped on the news that Mike Ulman is returning. Maybe the dip is warranted (I don’t do market timing), but not because of Mike Ulman. He’s an incredibly accomplished and experienced leader, a man of his word, and a workaholic. Maybe he’ll bring in a president, maybe not, but his overarching leadership is a good thing.

As for an overall game plan, his (and my) former colleague Mark Cohen, now a professor of business at Columbia, laid out a four-pointer that’s hard to fault: (1) reset the merchandise mix; (2) rebuild a promotional calendar; (3) undo the current “shop” structure; and (4) reconnect with employees. These were featured as bullet-points in the background (he never actually discussed them) during a CNBC interview pre-defenestration, when he said that he wasn’t sure the company can actually be saved.

To help implement this list, I’d suggest a few urgencies. Let’s concentrate on #2, “rebuild a promotional calendar.” I’d suggest a crash program to build targeted micro-sites based on demographics and using proximity marketing to attract bargain-hunters locally. Google’s local product-search function would seem a natural tie-in. And the company’s mobile site needs a location finder to tie all this together, including offering buy/ship-free options right there on the screen.

This is the chance for JCPenney to show the rest of the retail world that the huge disparity between online sales growth and in-store sales growth can be bridged in part by an all-out, high-tech campaign.