Macy's Shows J.C. Penney How to Rebuild After Johnson

At the heart of Ron Johnson’s plan to turn J.C. Penney into a mini mall of boutiques was the notion that the department store model needed reinvention. Yet while J.C. Penney faced challenges on Johnson’s arrival — not least that its middle-income customers had been hit hard by the economic downturn — other department stores have been thriving without a radical course correction. Exhibit A: Macy's, which has turned in 12 consecutive quarters of sales growth and managed to remain relevant in an age when many brick-and-mortar retailers have lost ground to the web.