Apple Store inventor Ron Johnson is given to Zen-like aphorisms that slightly miss the mark – instructing employees, for instance, to “ruthlessly eliminate hurry”. It adds to a sense of mixed messages. Beneath his trademark Midwestern calm, a colleague once observed, is “a boiling cauldron” that has powered a career of extremes.
Fêted as a revolutionary retail genius at Apple, Johnson bombed from hero to zero during a disastrous 18-month run at JCPenney, which, a decade on, still makes the lists of great management cock-ups. Ever since, says the New York Observer, he’s “been on a quest for redemption”.
Johnson’s attempt to revolutionise shopping
To his credit, Johnson shrugged off his humiliating firing, almost immediately securing Wall Street backing for a new venture that tapped his famed ability to put the “humanness” into tech support.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Enjoy Technology, which launched in 2015 when the “Uberisation” of everything was in full swing, was billed as “the next big thing in disruptive retail”, says Retail Dive.
Strip out the jargon and the essential offer was “a mobile store” – featuring a fleet of vans crammed with gadgets and empathetic geeks, bent on maximising that crucial “last-mile” opportunity to upsell. “What we’re trying to do,” said Johnson, “is to deliver unimagined customer service. It’s better than a store, it’s the same price as online, and it’s faster than even Amazon Prime.” In early 2020 Forbes declared that “this start-up may be his crowning achievement”.
Still, having set out to disrupt retail, Enjoy got disrupted itself. Nine months after scrambling onto the “blank-cheque” initial public offering bandwagon via a merger with Marquee Raine Acquisition, valued at $1.1bn, it has filed for bankruptcy, says the Financial Times. Johnson’s great comeback vehicle has evaporated into just another statistic of the Spac bust.
Humble career beginnings and a call from Apple
Now 62, Johnson started out humbly – after gaining a BA from Stanford and an MBA from Harvard – by taking a trainee position with Mervyn’s, a “middle-scale” Californian department-store chain, before moving back to Minnesota to join Target. It was here he made his mark as a moderniser, says Retail Dive: signing a series of design partnerships that turned Target into “Tar-zhay”, an aspirational, middlebrow mega-retailer, using “a playbook” that H&M, Uniqlo and many others have since copied. From there it was a short step to being headhunted by Apple in 2000.
If Ron Johnson made Target “hip”, he made Apple stores “the envy of retail”, says Forbes – eventually boasting “far higher sales per square foot than even luxury retailers such as Tiffany and Saks”. Johnson’s gamble was to put a computer shop among these swans in the guise of stylish, but approachable, temples of Apple technology. His new “Genius Bar” format upended accepted perceptions of dire technical support.
Decades after this “hyper-successful” retail gambit, Johnson was still name-dropping his “famed mentor” Steve Jobs, says the FT. Arguably he had every right to, says Fast Company. “The resurgence of Apple in the early 2000s is at least partially due” to the way Johnson “revolutionised the computer shopping experience”.
The Steve Jobs playbook
When the established but dowdy department chain JCPenney secured Johnson’s services in 2011, it seemed all its Christmases had come at once. Yet in record time, he inflicted wounds from which it is still recovering, says the New York Observer.
In keeping with Jobs’ “disdain for focus groups”, Johnson dispensed with customer surveys – spending big on a new regime that swept away favourite brands and an old-fashioned, but popular, coupon system, says Fast Company. Sales plunged, as did the shares – prompting Johnson’s early eviction.
Hopes that Enjoy Technology would mark a return to form have, at least temporarily, been dashed. Now in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the firm’s future is up in the air.
“I have learned from many, but the most powerful lessons I learned came from working… with Steve Jobs,” Johnson said last year. “He taught me that when you deliver the highest quality you can imagine, you will have a great business forever.” Not always.
-
Twenty 'finfluencers' questioned under caution by the UK regulatorThe individuals were interviewed voluntarily using the Financial Conduct Authority’s criminal powers
-
Number of ISA millionaires triples in three yearsThe number of people with £1 million in their ISAs has tripled in three years to reach 3,180. But could next week’s Budget put an end to future ISA millionaires?
-
UK wages grow at a record paceThe latest UK wages data will add pressure on the BoE to push interest rates even higher.
-
Trapped in a time of zombie governmentIt’s not just companies that are eking out an existence, says Max King. The state is in the twilight zone too.
-
America is in deep denial over debtThe downgrade in America’s credit rating was much criticised by the US government, says Alex Rankine. But was it a long time coming?
-
UK economy avoids stagnation with surprise growthGross domestic product increased by 0.2% in the second quarter and by 0.5% in June
-
Bank of England raises interest rates to 5.25%The Bank has hiked rates from 5% to 5.25%, marking the 14th increase in a row. We explain what it means for savers and homeowners - and whether more rate rises are on the horizon
-
UK wage growth hits a record highStubborn inflation fuels wage growth, hitting a 20-year record high. But unemployment jumps
-
UK inflation remains at 8.7% ‒ what it means for your moneyInflation was unmoved at 8.7% in the 12 months to May. What does this ‘sticky’ rate of inflation mean for your money?
-
VICE bankruptcy: how did it happen?Was the VICE bankruptcy inevitable? We look into how the once multibillion-dollar came crashing down.
