Home Depot Alumnus New JCP Head Of Stores

JCPenney has made a return trip to Home Depot to pick up an executive.

Having enlisted Marvin Ellison from Home Depot to serve as its chief executive last year, the department store retailer has now followed up by bringing on another former Home Depot exec, Joe McFarland, as its executive vice president of stores, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The outlet shares that McFarland, who will be replacing Tony Bartlett at JCPenney, brings to his new position 20 years of experience at the home improvement retailer, where his most recent title was president of the northern and western divisions — a position in which he oversaw the sales and operations of up to 800 stores and was in charge of 110,000 associates.

McFarland’s new role at JCPenney, the WSJ story adds, will find him overseeing the retailer’s approximately 1,020 stores, as well as a number of initiatives, including same-day pickup, in-store fulfillment of online orders and increasing sales productivity.

Bringing on McFarland is just the latest in a series of personnel moves that JCPenney has made over the last few months (promoting, WSJ points out, John Tighe to replace Elizabeth Sweney as chief merchant prior to the holidays and, last year, bringing on a former Target executive to serve as chief information officer), all happening concurrently with the retailer’s efforts to recover from consecutive years of losses — in large part by strengthening its eCommerce capabilities, an endeavor that has been successful as of late with Ellison at the helm.