J.C. Penney Rehires Myron Ullman to Clean Up Ron Johnson's Mess

When Myron Ullman, just turning 64, retired as chief executive officer of J.C. Penney in November 2011, he left with an exit deal worth about $15 million, offers to join various boards of directors, and a pretty good attitude. In an interview with D magazine—the D is for Dallas, near Penney’s Plano headquarters—he tied a bow on his tenure: “I’m at an age in my career where I don’t think of this all as life or death. … Business is something you work at, but it is not something that’s life-threatening. There are more important things.”

Seventeen months later, J.C. Penney is in unprecedented peril, and Ullman has been summoned back. Ullman’s successor, former Apple Stores leader Ron Johnson, a Silicon Valley wunderkind who had promised to give J.C. Penney a younger, hipper image, was fired by the board of directors on April 8. Johnson made many mistakes; his biggest was alienating middle-market customers by taking away the discounts they had come to expect. Sales fell by 25 percent in 2012, and the company lost nearly a billion dollars. Persuading lost customers to return to the fold is a bit like trying to win back a girlfriend: Occasionally it works, more often it ends in heartbreak.