Boston, MA 10/14/2013 (wallstreetpr) – Soon after J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (NYSE:JCP) started climbing up the sales ladder, it stands facing another danger in its way further up. The Chief Executive Officer, Mike Ullman had managed to gather enough funds to handle the operations for next two years with great efforts. After his return as CEO, he is now again faced with another challenge as the festive season approaches. When on one side all the competitors to the company including Kohl’s Corp. and Macy’s Inc. are announcing festive time discounts, J.C. Penney is on a fix. According to analysts U. S. retailers are most likely to announce heavy discounts in Washington in this time of the year. This would compel J.C. Penney to come up with similar strategies to maintain the footfall of its customers and at the same time, this would risk the gain margins of the company and result in a rethinking about the cash the company has accumulated for the coming years.
Another change in the shopping trends of the Americans that analysts have highlighted is that they are now less drawn towards the cloth market and are instead concentrating on other consumer durable. Americans are seen to invest their money more on appliances, cars and other similar stuff rather than on apparel and random accessories. In this scenario, to ensure enough sales, retailers are more bound to introducing discounts to tempt people to indulge in stuff other than that is on their shopping list. This puts Ullman’s company more vulnerable to hardships, who had been trying hard to undo his predecessor’s unsuccessful efforts.
Ron Johnson had been the CEO of the company for quite some time and in his presence, had made efforts to make few changes in the company’s strategies, none of which landed in favor of the company. In April Ullman returned to take his position as the CEO in the company and since then, he has been trying to put things back in order. He has even brought some private –label back which had earlier been popular among rich and youth. His efforts have helped the company shoot up sales, but did not much of affect on shares.
