Dov Charney Talks About How He Would Have Saved JCPenney

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What gets lost sometimes in all the tabloidish talk that surrounds American Apprel CEO Dov Charney is that underneath those '70s glasses, the man is at the helm of a serious, pioneering, massive corporation that he founded. On the heels of the news that troubled department store chain JCPenney has parted ways with its new CEO Ron Johnson and his hire, New York dandy Nick Wooster, Business Insider asked Charney what he would have done differently.

"I think they should have stuck with the course," he said of Penney's strategy pre-Johnson. "What Ron Johnson was trying to do was take it out of a suburban sensibility and take it into an urban sensibility. They weren't loyal to its spirit," he continued. "They have to respect the original core JCPenney brand. To shift gears so abruptly is not good for customers...I think some people were excluded by the new approach."

Still, though, he concludes that Johnson wasn't given enough time to execute whatever turnaround he was attempting. "You think of Steve Jobs as a man who 'thinks different' and that's what Ron Johnson was trying to do...[he's] a thinker and he wasn't given an adequate amount of time."
· American Apparel CEO: This Is How I Would Have Run JCPenney [Business Insider]
· Welp, That's That: Nick Wooster Is Out at JCPenney [Racked N'tl]
· This is American Apparel's Shiny, New, High-Tech Warehouse [Racked]