Former Apple retail genius and ousted JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson is coming back in a big way
He will also be joining the company's board of directors.
Since JCPenney ousted Johnson in 2013, he's been working on a retail startup called Enjoy, but had been in touch with Nasty Gal founder Sophia Amoruso for the last year.
When Nasty Gal opened its first physical store in Los Angeles in March 2014, Johnson flew out to give Amoruso advice. Nasty Gal plans to use the $16 million Series C - and Johnson's expertise as a board member - to open at least one more brick-nand-mortar location.
"We don't have an aggressive rollout planned," Amoruso told Re/code's Jason Del Rey. "We want to get another one open, learn a lot and then hopefully destroy everyone."
Amoruso stepped down as CEO of Nasty Gal in January, after a year of slowing revenue growth and lay-offs.
Johnson took over at JCPenney for 16 months and announced an aggressive turnaround plan, which included doing away with the retailer's popular coupon program and creating shop-in-shops that showcased certain vendors.
That strategy sent sales crashing 32%.
Bill Ackman, the hedge fund manager and investor who recruited Johnson, called his tenure a "disaster."
"One of the big mistakes was perhaps too much change too quickly without adequate testing on what the impact would be," Ackman said at a Reuters conference in 2013.
Ashley Lutz contributed to this story.
- 2 states where home prices are falling because there are too many houses and not enough buyers
- US buys 81 Soviet-era combat aircraft from Russia's ally costing on average less than $20,000 each, report says
- A couple accidentally shipped their cat in an Amazon return package. It arrived safely 6 days later, hundreds of miles away.
- 9 health benefits of drinking sugarcane juice in summer
- 10 benefits of incorporating almond oil into your daily diet
- From heart health to detoxification: 10 reasons to eat beetroot
- Why did a NASA spacecraft suddenly start talking gibberish after more than 45 years of operation? What fixed it?
- ICICI Bank shares climb nearly 5% after Q4 earnings; mcap soars by ₹36,555.4 crore