JCPenney - Fashion Company Profile
JCPenney is the American department store chain founded by James Cash Penney in 1902 - today a private company inside Catalyst Brands, the Plano, Texas retail group formed in January 2025 by merging JCPenney with SPARC Group alongside Aeropostale, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer, Lucky Brand and Nautica.
Company Snapshot
- Status
- Operating - a U.S. department store chain and online retailer, part of Catalyst Brands since January 2025
- Type
- Private - a Catalyst Brands LLC company; Catalyst was formed in January 2025 by merging JCPenney with SPARC Group, and is owned by Simon Property Group and Brookfield
- Headquarters
- Plano, Texas, United States
- Founded
- 1902, as the Golden Rule store in Kemmerer, Wyoming, by James Cash Penney; incorporated as the J. C. Penney Company in 1913
Company Profile
As a department-store retailer itself, JCPenney carries no Amazon/eBay shop box here - its own site, linked above, is the destination. JCPenney emerged from its 2020 Chapter 11 under Simon Property Group and Brookfield ownership, and in January 2025 it combined with SPARC Group to form Catalyst Brands, headquartered at JCPenney's Plano, Texas base, launching with about $9 billion in revenue and about 1,800 stores across its brands. The earlier record - the Long-Range Plan's four strategies, the more-than-1,000-store and catalog-era description and the timeline from the 1902 Golden Rule store - is kept in full on the history page.
The customer claim is the boldest in the profile: JCPenney does business with over half of the households in America each year, and its stated vision for growth is to be the preferred shopping choice for Middle America. The strategy follows from the arithmetic - get more of those households to spend more, while going after the other half of America - and the company organised that ambition into a Long-Range Plan of four integrated strategies, set out in the next section. Even the spelling is part of the record, and the historical record is firm about it: it is not spelled JCPennies, there is no space after the JC, and the proper form is JCPenney, not JC Penney.
JCPenney History
The earlier record for this company - its history, past brand line-ups, figures and photographs from the periods described - is kept on a separate page for historical reference.
JCPenney History & Historical Profile →Common Questions
Who owns JCPenney now?
Catalyst Brands LLC, formed in January 2025 by merging JCPenney with SPARC Group. Catalyst is owned by Simon Property Group and Brookfield, which bought JCPenney out of its 2020 bankruptcy.
When was JCPenney founded?
On April 14, 1902, when James Cash Penney opened the Golden Rule dry-goods store in Kemmerer, Wyoming; the company was incorporated as the J. C. Penney Company in 1913.
How is the company name spelled?
JCPenney - no space after the JC, and not JCPennies and not JC Penney.
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