I happen to have some inside knowledge, this was a concept store created for a specific marketing campaign and no intention of this being rolled out further to their stores. The store/campaign itself was like three waves of executives ago at this point and will likely never be more than this single store. They were experimenting with box in a box but have mostly lost those partnerships too, the Sephora partnership was largely seen as beneficial to Sephora more than JCP.

Thats really too bad, it makes shopping so pleasant.

I know Penny's has opened new stores, it looks like they learned the right lessons from this store though, better merchandising, more lighting, etc.

That's good. For nostalgia reasons I shop at the mall around the holidays. JCP seems to be marching right behind the SEARS that is no longer there.

This sounds really interesting - they've decided to make their new stores a place to visit not just to shop but as a place to learn (clearly leading to more shopping).

Stores used to rely on other mall properties to do the 2nd part but as the concept of the Mall starts fading, they need to start doing this themselves.

WOW do I love their new logo. This all seems really well thought out. Glad they're doing the hard work to step out of the 90s!

which one, I searched and found several iterations that are supposedly "new"

Wow, it's like an Apple store but it opened six years after JCP fired the CEO they headhunted from Apple retail. And the CEO mentioned in the article has already been replaced.