Podcast
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In a video on Enjoy Technology’s investor website, Ron Johnson, the former head of J.C. Penney and Apple’s retail arm, says that the company has come up with the next big disruptive thing in retail.
That would be the mobile store — a van full of electronics merchandise that comes right to customers’ homes. As the company sees it, the “commerce-at-home” channel fills a gap between e-commerce (which is convenient but impersonal) and the store (which offers human connections and service but requires some driving).
But before Enjoy could disrupt retail on any large scale, it got disrupted. Its mobile stores started hemorrhaging money, a state of things exacerbated by the constrained supply of Apple products that Enjoy helped sell through a contract with the tech maker.
On Thursday, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with plans to keep operating through the process and a bridge loan to keep it afloat until it secures debtor-in-possession financing.
On this episode of The Backroom, we talk about Johnson’s retail past and the future of his mobile store venture.
Editor’s note: This conversation was recorded prior to Enjoy’s Chapter 11 filing.
Resource links:
- Enjoy Technology files for bankruptcy with plans to sell itself
- Ron Johnson’s Enjoy Technology wants to create a new form of retail. But first it must survive.
- Another Enjoy Technology CFO out as it faces cash crisis
- Enjoy Technology to ‘pause’ on selling Apple products
- Retail fails: 6 of the biggest blunders from industry history
Editor’s note: This show was produced and edited by Caroline Jansen.
