2 area JCPenney stores to close
King of Prussia Mall and Willow Grove Park Mall stores on the list to be shut down
The JCPenney stores at King of Prussia Mall and the Willow Grove Park Mall will be closing. They are among five planned Pennsylvania store closings and 138 closings nationwide announced by the company Friday.
According to a company statement, the liquidation process will begin at most stores April 17, and most stores will be closing in June.
The closures are part of an effort announced Feb. 24 by the company to improve profitability. At the time of the announcement, specific sites earmarked for closure were not released.
According to the company statement issued Friday, J.C. Penney Co. Inc. will close a total of 138 stores, one supply chain facility in Lakeland, Fla., and will relocate another supply chain facility in Buena Park, Calif.
Approximately 5,000 positions nationwide will be impacted by the store closures.
JCPenney will provide outplacement support services for those eligible associates who will be leaving the company. The statement also stated that JCPenney is in the process of identifying relocation opportunities within the company for leaders.
At the time of the Feb. 24 announcement, CEO Marvin Ellison said the company decided that coordinating a voluntary early retirement program with the store closures could lessen the effect on employees. He said the number of full-time workers expected to take advantage of the early retirement incentive will far exceed the number of fulltime positions affected by the closures.
Calls to the corporate offices of J.C. Penney Co. Inc. about the number of employees impacted at each location were not returned by press time. A call to the King of Prussia JCPenney store was referred to the corporate office.
Additionally, a request for comment from King of Prussia Mall management was also referred to the corporate offices of J.C. Penney Co. Inc.
Last month’s announcement about the plan to prune its store numbers came as the company posted a profit for the fourth quarter, compared to a loss a year ago. But total sales were down slightly, and a key revenue metric declined a bit as well.
At the time of the announcement, Ellison acknowledged that J.C. Penney wasn’t strategic with promotions, which hurt profit margins, and said that its level of couponing was “unhealthy.” It plans to use a more datadriven approach to pricing this year after testing the strategy in some categories last year.
Like other department stores, J.C. Penney is trying to adjust to changing shopping patterns. But it is also still recovering from a catastrophic reinvention plan under a former CEO that sent sales and profits freefalling starting in 2012. Since then, it has focused efforts on its home area, started selling major appliances again and expanded its number of in-store Sephora beauty shops.
While its annual sales still shrunk, J.C. Penney was able to pull in a $1 million profit for the full fiscal year, the first time it earned an annual profit since 2010.
The stores being closed represent about 14 percent of its current store count of about 1,000, but less than 5 percent of total annual sales.