JCPenney

So I grew up in it, literally.

I mean, I laugh, I have a baby picture, which I think was at the Sears or JCPenney's photo studio.

And there's little trucks on the walls in the background.

And so I feel like my family had a destiny for me that I had to follow.

Lots of memorabilia, lots of actual...

They have the elevator from Dawn that they moved out of the JCPenney and put into the museum.

It is still worth the visit.

Yes.

Man, I remember it used to be so packed.

There were Sears, there was JCPenney.

Hooters.

Hooters.

Yes.

And this one is JCPenney.

JCPenney very much like Sears had gone back a long, long ways.

Did you ever get like the JCPenney's

catalog? Oh yeah.

It was great.

I remember back in the 80s, I would get the JCPenney catalog from my grandmother and she would want me to circle things in there that I would like for Christmas.

Yes.

But then you get to the end.

You leave perhaps the most innovative company in the world with a successful retail operation and go to JCPenney?

Why? Well, I mean, in that room, I told you Steve was the digital guy and I was the analog guy.

Yeah.

And I felt that I would limit myself to retail opportunities because that's what I knew and loved.

And that was probably the big mistake.

But and immediately something came along, which was JCPenney needed a board member and they wanted me to be a board member.

And then after they met me, they said, would I become a CEO? And I just thought, wow, when I grew up, the department store at that big mall two miles away from my house.

How do you feel about the rent-to-own industry being that giving? I mean, you know, in the way I look at it, it's because it's a different type of industry.

I mean, Macy's doesn't literally go around asking JCPenney, hey, man, I'm not really sure about this.

And JCPenney doesn't go, hey, man, why do you guys have the Macy's Day Parade every single year? What does that do for you? So in the other side of it, rent-to-own is like that.

Where there are people to lean on who are saying, you know what, I know you do exactly what I do, but it's okay.

I'm going to tell you.

I mean, you got to give customers a reason to go into the store.

Long time ago, when Ron Johnson took over JCPenney's, he learned that people were going into JCPenney's for the deal.

And when he took away the deals, he lost foot traffic.

What you're talking about is another reason people will go to see what's new.

I mean, you got to give customers a reason to go into the store.

Long time ago, when Ron Johnson took over JCPenney's, he learned that people were going into JCPenney's for the deal.

And when he took away the deals, he lost foot traffic.

What you're talking about is another reason people will go to see what's new.

And instead of sending postcards and letters back and forth, they said, why don't we just record audio? I think that might have been my sister's idea or her husband's idea, too.

So they got a really cheap JCPenney reel-to-reel recorder, just one quarter inch mono, I think, thing.

I would have my mom turn it on.

All you had to do is press record and turn this one knob.