JCPenney adding appliances, partnering with other retailers to combat e-ta

JCPenney is expanding its merchandise assortment beyond apparel to capture sales in the growing home-goods sector, CEO Marvin Ellison told a group of investors this week. “We are a very apparel-dependent retailer. We’re never going to get out of the apparel business, but we understand that we have to do things that are more conducive to where customers are spending their money,” he said. “Our customers are saying to us that they are spending a lot on home beautification. And we understand that we can do a lot better at that.”

To that end, Penney is adding dishwashers and other major appliances to 500 of its 1,000 stores. “We’ll have that done in the third quarter, and we have 1,200 major appliances online — a seamless online process of ordering, delivering, hauling away your old appliance and installing new appliances in one seamless process,” Ellison said. Appliances are drawing new customers to Penney stores, he said.

The retailer will also beef up its window-treatment selection. “JCPenney was the most dominant retailer in America just 10 years ago in custom windows, and we think we can get a lot of that back,” he said. “We’re going to expand the space in 500 stores.”

Penney is also teaming up with Ashley Furniture and with flooring manufacturer Empire to sell some of their products in its stores, he said. “We can put ourselves in a position where we are not as dependent on the weather being perfectly aligned to our expectations,” Ellison said. “And while we’re doing that, we think it creates a model that’s more difficult for pure-play e-commerce competitors to compete against.”