How Much Apple Can a Penney Buy?

Apple has been probably THE Number One retail success story of the 2000s.

While Chief Brain Steve Jobs has gotten most of the credit, Ron Johnson was the store design executive who conceptualized many of the innovations and got the stores built. And now Johnson is taking that innovative track record to JC Penney.

JC Penney was not the Number One retail success story of the last decade – not even in the top 50. It has struggled in the seven years since Mike Ullman promisingly stepped in as chairman and ceo (stepping, at the same time, into the formidable shoes of Allen Questrom).

Ullman seemed the ideal choice for Penney’s, too, with a resume that included LVMH, Macy’s and Polo Ralph Lauren. It was all the right background – fashion apparel and department stores.

So does the right background matter? Or is an innovator an innovator? Do sound retail concepts translate well, no matter what you’re selling?

For Penney, Johnson doesn’t seem to have the right background (although, while at Target, he was credited with launching the Michael Graves line of merchandise). But then again, can you simply dismiss all that amazing Apple sauce?

The financial community likes the move. “I think this is a game-changer,” Deborah Weinswig, a Citigroup retail analyst, told The New York Times. “[What Apple has done] in terms of retail is absolutely unbelievable, so if [Johnson] can take a little bit of that magic and sprinkle it onto JC Penney, you could really create the next generation of retailing.”

Convincing, I guess. Except that we know how little the financial community understands the tricky game that is store design.

But here’s a voice of support directly from the store design world. And it’s someone who truly gets what Johnson’s facing. “Ron Johnson . . . will be the dose of reinvention that the American department store has been longing for,” James Damian, now principal of James Damian Brand Integration Services, posted on VMSD’s LinkedIn site a couple of weeks ago. “He will bring curiosity, vision and imagination back, using marketing, design, communication, product development and visual merchandising as ‘weapons of mass distinction.’ A great acquisition, well-played, JC Penney!”

Damian, of course, took Johnson’s exact journey, only in reverse. He brought fashion retailing experience, with Macy’s and Harvey Nichols, to Best Buy in 1998, as senior vp of Best Buy's Enterprise Design Group. And during his 12 years there, he arguably reinvented the consumer electronics in-store experience.

Apple and Johnson did that, too, taking computers from drab big boxes to sleek, interactive, fun, friendly and helpful oases.

Maybe JC Penney doesn’t want a Genius Bar. But I think it hopes it hired the genius.