Celebration of Fools: An Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of JCPenney [Hardcover]

Bill Hare (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 2004

"Celebration of Fools" is an insider's look at the rise and fall of Penney's remarkable history, charting the people and events behind this American institution. As entertaining as it is instructive, the book is a cautionary tale with universal implications for all of corporate America. Packed with compelling characters including the heroine, the highest-ranking woman at the company, the book takes readers through a number of settings, from the company's humble mid-western roots to the excesses of lush corporate headquarters. Filled with valuable business lessons as well as astonishing revelations about an American icon, this is a book that will keep readers enthralled from first page till last.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Former corporate speechwriter Hare presents an unvarnished look at the J.C. Penney Company, a truly American saga that parallels U.S. business history itself. Hare looks at the company from its beginning in 1902 as a dry goods store, through its rise into a successful chain of full-service department stores rivaled only by Sears, Roebuck, to its fall into bankruptcy in the 1990s due to corporate bungling. But his narrative is based on individual portraits of the men who first developed—and who, he says, later betrayed—the company's "revolutionary concept": "letting stores be driven by clever individuals whose long hours of work would include a 'solicitous interest' in the well-being of the store's surrounding community." Hare crafts excellent portraits ranging from founder J.C. Penney, a "gutsy risk taker," to the company's prebankruptcy leader, Jim Oesterreicher, "a man clearly in over his head as CEO." He also captures how women such as Gail Duff-Bloom had to fight to rise to positions of influence within a male-dominated corporate culture. The weakest parts of the book are its first few chapters, featuring Hare's dramatization of the company's early years: his creation of incidents and dialogue to create "reasonable reflections" based on available historical records fall flat. But the rest of the narrative, for which Hare interviewed firsthand participants, effectively recreate key incidents, such as charismatic Penney CEO Bill Howell making his unexpectedly thrilling 1993 speech on corporate sexism to the Ladies Professional Golf Association.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

"Cecil Johnson, syndicated columnist: ""A riveting narrative history focusing on the people who created the company, made it great and were involved in its decline.""

Executive Insider (ExecuNet.com e-newsletter): ""A gripping, exciting and alarming business thriller where the reader knows or at least suspects the ending, but nevertheless finds the journey fascinating.While the book has the energy and drive of a good summer beach read, it delivers a compelling argument that an executive who reinvents himself after he reaches the top rung may have just manufactured a fool.""

George Anderson, Moderator, RetailWire.com: ""Celebration of Fools tells a story about the power of committing to a vision that all in retail or any other business should aspire."""

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 17 and up
  
• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: AMACOM; 1st edition (June 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0814471595
• ISBN-13: 978-0814471593
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,178,206 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lessons to learn, June 22, 2004

By 

J. Richards - See all my reviews

This review is from: Celebration of Fools: An Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of JCPenney (Hardcover)

Celebration of Fools by Bill Hare is a narrative about the people and events at JC Penney that contributed to the company's growing success and about those that led to its decline in the 1990s when business and the economy were soaring. The company and its leaders lost, or forgot, the company's vision to bring value to customers and communities. Once the descent began, no one, not even the board, seemed to question that critical decisions were not being made for good business reasons.

The company's story is told through an organized collection of stories, remembrances, personal accounts, archival data and the like. This approach gives the book a very human feel for the people who built the company and those who failed it.

As for lessons to be learned from the book, major flaws seemed to infect the company. The decision to move the company to Dallas did not appear to have been made for any solid business reasons. The move took its toll on the quality of the company's leadership, its connection to the clothing industry and consistent merchandizing. The company lost its ability to select the right employees, which seems to be another major shortcoming. There didn't seem to be any thought to succession planning or how performance should be rewarded. The Penney focus on bringing value to the customer and communities seem to disappear.

The book covers the "rise and fall" of JC Penney from around 1900 to 2000 when new management took over for a turn-around attempt. It will be interesting to see if the ground lost in competitive positioning, financial health and market image can be regained. But, as the author states in the Introduction, that will have to be another story altogether.

I liked the book. It was well-told and clearly written. I appreciated the writer's perspective. It made me think about people in companies and how their decisions affect customers, other employees and communities they touch.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Compelling Vision Betrayed, May 13, 2004

By 

Robert Morris (Dallas, Texas) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Celebration of Fools: An Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of JCPenney (Hardcover)

Hare suggests that CEOs W.R. Howell and James Oesterreicher as well as their associates were fools to abandon the cultural values and operating principles which enabled the J.C. Penney Company (JCP) to become the most profitable and highly-regarded retail merchandiser in the world. With all due respect to Wal-Mart's executive leadership, JCP's decline was the result of self-inflicted wounds.

The "inside look" Hare provides is less the result of any privileged access he had than the willingness of those who did have such access to share their reactions to (and explanations of) their beloved company's deterioration. These insiders felt betrayed. More in sadness than in anger, they shared with Hare directly or through other sources their thoughts and feelings about JCP which "had shifted from being a company of merchants to an organization of managers, with its focus changing from serving customers and communities to maximizing sales and profits. Finally [during the regimes of Howell and Oesterreicher], the actions of its leadership became both soulless and silly."

To appreciate what JCP had lost, Hare carefully explains what JCP once had. Rather than glorify James Cash Penney himself, Hare duly acknowledges the founder's importance while suggesting -- with all due respect to him, "The Body of Doctrine" (page 36), and "H.C.S.C." (page 37) -- that others deserve most of the credit for leading JCP to greatness, both as a retail merchant and as a human community. They include Jack Maynard, Earl Sams, Don Seibert, and Walt Neppl.

In this context, I am reminded of David Glass and Lee Scott. When Glass became CEO of Wal-Mart in 1992, the company was doing $43.8 billion in sales. Just three years later, under his leadership, sales hit $100 billion. According to Robert Slater, Glass "took Wal-Mart out of Middle America and made it into a global brand." Glass and his colleagues stayed true to Walton's idiosyncratic management style while investing in the technologies and logistics operations that a multibillion-dollar company needs. After succeeding Glass as CEO while also remaining faithful to Sam Walton's core values, Scott was the driving force behind Wal-Mart's adoption of various advanced technologies which continue to provide a decisive competitive advantage.

In this volume, Hare carefully traces a process of deterioration which began when Howell became CEO and he does so with a combination of sadness, anger, and dismay. The historical information and personal accounts which Hare provides leave little doubt that principles and profits are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary, they are interdependent. Mr. Penney knew that in 1902 when he opened the door to his first store, "The Golden Rule." We would be well-advised to keep that in mind 102 years later.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book..., July 20, 2005

By 

Grady Campbell (Fort Lauderdale, FL) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Celebration of Fools: An Inside Look at the Rise and Fall of JCPenney (Hardcover)

Good, interesting tale of Penney's during the 20th century. My dad was with Penney's in a number of positions including store manager; I bought the book as a gift for him, then got hooked and read it first. His impression was that the parts he knew about personally were well portrayed (he was with the company from ~1953-1963, and from ~1975-1980).

The story is from the point of view of a speechwriter in the company, and even the climax of the book is a speech. Much of the book is historical, so that viewpoint doesn't detract from that part. There are likely other perspectives that would be more interesting for the more contemporary phases of the story, though (_e.g._ a member of top management). On the other hand, a speechwriter would have access to the company and its top personnel in varied and candid settings, without having so much a stake in the action that relating the action is colored by the author wanting to appear in a favorable light. So the author did have a unique vantage point, and the story ended up being a pretty interesting portrayal of the company's spectacular successes, and some failures, too.