Celebration of Fools

"Celebration of fools" is the history of JC Penney, one of the largest departmental store chains in the United States. The chain, in its nearly hundred year history, has had a number of ups and downs, and is currently struggling to rid itself of a somewhat unwise acquisition - that of the Eckerd Corporation with its chain of drugstores.

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Penney, however, was bailed out by some of his store managers and other employees led by Earl Sams. Penney had made them rich; and they in turn presented him with 250,000 dollars to repurchase stock in the company. Although he remained as Chairman of the company, as far as the book is concerned, Penney then fades from the picture, appearing only infrequently, and even then mostly on ceremonial occasions. The book contains stories about some of the most colorful store managers – the people responsible for the rise and growth of the company. It also traces, in some detail, the backgrounds and growth of some of the future CEOs and Presidents of the company, who in the early years at least, were extremely capable men, having risen through the ranks. However, according to the author, the decline in the company's fortunes began in the period when W. R. Howell was the CEO. The portrait of the man, as painted by the author, is none too flattering. By the late 1990's the company was faring poorly. While in its earlier years it had its fair share of individualists and entrepreneurs, by the end of the 20th century JC Penney was a company of conformists and yes-men.

Eventually, in September 2000, Jim Oesterreicher who succeeded Howell as CEO was replaced by Allen Questrom, who then launched a turnaround effort. In the process, one of the cornerstones of the Penney philosophy, that of great autonomy for store managers, was removed and centralized merchandizing introduced. The book has several weak points. For one thing, the larger picture is rarely clear, and a business perspective is absent. There is little information on the evolution of the industry, or the competitors. Bill Hare, the author, who was a speech writer for the company's senior executives, including the last two CEO's, focuses on the stories of a few people. One gets the feeling that the persons he focuses on, especially in the later years, were not central characters in the developments that were taking place. For example, the attention paid to Gale Duff-Bloom, does not seem to be justified by her role or influence in the company. The author seems to write of the people whom he happened to come into contact and knew, rather than about the people who mattered. As a speech writer, he could call himself an insider, but clearly, he was not too much of an insider.

Many of the conversations and incidents, as the author admits, have been recreated, using his knowledge of the people and circumstances. However, all too often, the conversations appear contrived and artificial, and the characters two-dimensional.

And finally, to the title of the book. In 1986, JC Penney decided to shift its headquarters from New York to Plano, Texas. This was a proposal that had come up several times in the past, but had been rejected by previous CEOs. The move did not please all the people in the head office, and had a particularly severe impact on the buying function, when several experienced employees decided to quit rather than relocate.

The opulence of the company's new headquarters reflected the hubris and complacency prevalent in the company at the time. As the author points out, there have been several instances where successful companies built and moved into swanky corporate offices, and then saw their performance nosedive. JC Penney was no exception. While the company had some of its most profitable years in the early 1990's, the writing, according to the author, was already on the wall. The company had by then abandoned many of the values that had made it so successful in the past, and the move to luxurious new surroundings was merely one manifestation of a larger malaise. At the company's corporate offices, while their business crumbled around them, incompetent senior executives gloried in outward symbols of their wealth and power – verily, a celebration of fools.