Dear New CEO of JCPenney,
Against my better judgment, I entered your store for the first time tonight. Turns out my better judgment was right. I went in looking for a sport jacket and came out with the desire to open a clothing store just because a wombat with a small business loan and a pencil could compete with what I just experienced.
First of all, as I approached the store, there was music blaring from speakers that the front door that screams, "If you don't spend your free time at coffee shops ordering beverages with longer names than Spanish monarchs talking about what losers people who don't hang out at coffee shops drinking fluffy half skim tuxedo caramel sprinkle mochas are you're not welcome here." But my wife said I should be able to find something here, so I gritted my teeth and opened the door. The music was louder in the entry way, but hey, I had momentum and how bad could it be, right?
As I broke into the store proper, my mind simply froze. I was assaulted by a combination of brightness and color one might expect if a lighting store and a sherbet factory were watching a Cheech and Chong movie and got a little too groovy, if you're picking up what I'm laying down... I was literally so disoriented that I couldn't figure out what to do and I simply stopped and stood there looking around. There were no useful signs, no indication of what might be where, just more bad music, bright lights and feminine colors.
With no more useful idea of what to do other than that standing still would make me look like even more of an idiot than I already felt, I began walking. Forward. There was no point in turning because THERE ARE NO SIGNS. Or if there are, the visual noise was so intense that I did not even see them. Same difference. As I'm walking, it slowly dawns on me that I must be moving in generally the "correct" direction as I'm beginning to see posters and pictures of muscular men wearing next to nothing, which seems fairly odd since it's a clothing store not a naked man store. Anyway, I assume that's how you identify the men's department now.
After walking in a few frustrated circles, I found my way out of the melon-vomit-colored purgatory into which I'd wandered and into the section I was looking for, where there were suits and such. Most of them were shiny, and nearly all of them had tags on them that said "slim fit". And all of them are apparently made in Vietnam now.
I like Vietnam. It has trees, and food, and people, and things. I imagine it's a great place. It's also a near certainty that there are not people there who look like me. I can't even get my ARMS in their jackets. (Even their biggest, a 48" jacket, I could have easily ripped like The Hulk.) And apparently they can't envision anyone as fat as me, as the sizes seem to end about 4" smaller than would look less than entirely ridiculous on me. You'd think the American JCP buyers would have told them Americans are fat.
So, Mr. New CEO of JCPenney, who took over from the CEO of JCPenney who was hired from Apple and tried to turn the store into an Apple store and nearly bankrupted it... I have a question for you: who on God's green earth is your target demographic? 22 year old women and metros? Are you trying to finish the job the Applebot started? Because that's what your store looks like. And that's what your selection looks like. You missed a sale tonight and a return customer later because your inventory would only fit men from third world countries. I like men from third world countries, God made them too. BUT WE'RE NOT THEM. I hate to be Lieutenant Commander Obvious here, but since when is marketing to a wafer thin slice of the population around your store a wise business model? I am a rodeo clown as retail goes (and many other things, before anyone volunteers), but I am CERTAIN I could open a store to compete with yours and beat it on the store-to-store sales level. You know how? By having clothes that a) look at least MILDLY similar to the clothes that people there ACTUALLY WEAR and b) by having sizes that actually fit those people and c) by not assaulting people with music you'd never hear outside a Starbucks run by a tone-deaf person. In case the social engineers you hired to develop your pretentiously avant garde and insanely stupid business model aren't aware, if I can't find anything that looks less than utterly ridiculous and oh, maybe FITS ME in your store, guess what I'm not doing? You think about that, I'll wait...
Good luck with your whatever it is you're doing. I won't be back.
Signed,
Big fat American buying clothes somewhere else
Against my better judgment, I entered your store for the first time tonight. Turns out my better judgment was right. I went in looking for a sport jacket and came out with the desire to open a clothing store just because a wombat with a small business loan and a pencil could compete with what I just experienced.
First of all, as I approached the store, there was music blaring from speakers that the front door that screams, "If you don't spend your free time at coffee shops ordering beverages with longer names than Spanish monarchs talking about what losers people who don't hang out at coffee shops drinking fluffy half skim tuxedo caramel sprinkle mochas are you're not welcome here." But my wife said I should be able to find something here, so I gritted my teeth and opened the door. The music was louder in the entry way, but hey, I had momentum and how bad could it be, right?
As I broke into the store proper, my mind simply froze. I was assaulted by a combination of brightness and color one might expect if a lighting store and a sherbet factory were watching a Cheech and Chong movie and got a little too groovy, if you're picking up what I'm laying down... I was literally so disoriented that I couldn't figure out what to do and I simply stopped and stood there looking around. There were no useful signs, no indication of what might be where, just more bad music, bright lights and feminine colors.
With no more useful idea of what to do other than that standing still would make me look like even more of an idiot than I already felt, I began walking. Forward. There was no point in turning because THERE ARE NO SIGNS. Or if there are, the visual noise was so intense that I did not even see them. Same difference. As I'm walking, it slowly dawns on me that I must be moving in generally the "correct" direction as I'm beginning to see posters and pictures of muscular men wearing next to nothing, which seems fairly odd since it's a clothing store not a naked man store. Anyway, I assume that's how you identify the men's department now.
After walking in a few frustrated circles, I found my way out of the melon-vomit-colored purgatory into which I'd wandered and into the section I was looking for, where there were suits and such. Most of them were shiny, and nearly all of them had tags on them that said "slim fit". And all of them are apparently made in Vietnam now.
I like Vietnam. It has trees, and food, and people, and things. I imagine it's a great place. It's also a near certainty that there are not people there who look like me. I can't even get my ARMS in their jackets. (Even their biggest, a 48" jacket, I could have easily ripped like The Hulk.) And apparently they can't envision anyone as fat as me, as the sizes seem to end about 4" smaller than would look less than entirely ridiculous on me. You'd think the American JCP buyers would have told them Americans are fat.
So, Mr. New CEO of JCPenney, who took over from the CEO of JCPenney who was hired from Apple and tried to turn the store into an Apple store and nearly bankrupted it... I have a question for you: who on God's green earth is your target demographic? 22 year old women and metros? Are you trying to finish the job the Applebot started? Because that's what your store looks like. And that's what your selection looks like. You missed a sale tonight and a return customer later because your inventory would only fit men from third world countries. I like men from third world countries, God made them too. BUT WE'RE NOT THEM. I hate to be Lieutenant Commander Obvious here, but since when is marketing to a wafer thin slice of the population around your store a wise business model? I am a rodeo clown as retail goes (and many other things, before anyone volunteers), but I am CERTAIN I could open a store to compete with yours and beat it on the store-to-store sales level. You know how? By having clothes that a) look at least MILDLY similar to the clothes that people there ACTUALLY WEAR and b) by having sizes that actually fit those people and c) by not assaulting people with music you'd never hear outside a Starbucks run by a tone-deaf person. In case the social engineers you hired to develop your pretentiously avant garde and insanely stupid business model aren't aware, if I can't find anything that looks less than utterly ridiculous and oh, maybe FITS ME in your store, guess what I'm not doing? You think about that, I'll wait...
Good luck with your whatever it is you're doing. I won't be back.
Signed,
Big fat American buying clothes somewhere else
No comments:
Post a Comment