A dry-goods partnership in a Wyoming mining town.

JCPenney takes its name from James Cash Penney and its beginnings from a small dry-goods shop in Kemmerer, Wyoming. The State Historical Society of Missouri, in its Historic Missourians profile of Penney, says he went to work in 1898 for Thomas Callahan and Guy Johnson, who owned dry-goods stores called Golden Rule stores in Colorado and Wyoming. In 1899 he was sent to Evanston, Wyoming, to work with Johnson in another of their shops, and the two partners then asked him to join them in opening a new Golden Rule store. Using savings and a loan, the society says, Penney bought into the partnership and moved with his wife and infant son to Kemmerer to run it.

English Wikipedia gives the opening date of the Kemmerer store as April 14, 1902, and the University of Wyoming Libraries, introducing its J. C. Penney collections, likewise dates the small Golden Rule store in Kemmerer to 1902. English Wikipedia says Penney took part in opening two more stores and bought full interest in all three when Callahan and Johnson dissolved their partnership in 1907; that he moved his headquarters to Salt Lake City in 1909 to be closer to banks and railroads; and that the business was incorporated in 1913 as the J. C. Penney Company, with William Henry McManus named as a co-founder. The headquarters moved to New York City in 1914, the encyclopedia says, to simplify buying, financing and the transport of goods.

The words over those early doors carried an idea as well as a name. “Golden Rule” was the name of the chain Penney joined, and the University of Wyoming Libraries describes his Golden Rule approach as one built on fairness, honesty and community trust. Kemmerer still holds the story: English Wikipedia lists the J. C. Penney Historic District there, which includes a Golden Rule Store building and the J. C. Penney House, and says the district was designated a U.S. National Historic Landmark in 1978. The encyclopedia also records the company’s later move to Plano, Texas, where construction of a new headquarters began in 1990 and was completed in 1992, and where the company returned to that headquarters in July 2023.

Penney’s, JCPenney and a short-lived “jcp.”

The name on the store has been written several ways. English Wikipedia’s gallery of company marks shows a Penney’s logo used from 1963 to 1971, which it says remained on some stores until the 1980s, and a photograph caption in the same article recalls a period when the chain was branded as Penneys and used a more stylised lettering. The encyclopedia says that in 1971 the company adopted the JCPenney style in its advertising, and its gallery dates a JCPenney logo to 1971–2000, a boxed version to 2000–2005, and the red JCPenney wordmark that appears on stores today to 2008.

The 2010s brought three changes in quick succession. Early in 2011 the company introduced a mark that set a lowercase “jcp” inside a simple box; PR Daily, writing on February 25, 2011, said its type resembled, if it was not the same as, the lettering of its predecessor. Soapbox, the Cincinnati publication, reported on March 1, 2011 that the company had reviewed submissions from its own associates, from design agencies, from the University of Cincinnati and from the Rhode Island School of Design, and had chosen a design by Luke Langhus, then a third-year graphic design student at UC. Packaging and exterior store signs, Soapbox said, were to be updated over the following three years.

That schedule was overtaken. Under chief executive Ron Johnson, the company held a launch event in New York on January 25, 2012, and Retail & Restaurant Facility Business reported two days later that it had revealed a new logo as part of a wider overhaul of its brand identity, store design and pricing. The company said the new mark combined elements evoking the American flag with its commitment to treating customers “fair and square,” and that the logo would take effect on February 1, 2012, together with new pricing and new in-store signs. On October 11, 2013, Retail Dive reported that under returning chief executive Mike Ullman the company had begun reintroducing its old red-letter logo and phasing out the boxed “jcp,” with a company spokeswoman citing customer feedback that favoured the old design.

Design and documentation.

A department store brand is carried less by any single product than by the things a shopper sees on the way in and on the way out: the name above the entrance, the lettering on the shopping bag, the colour of a carrier or a box, and, for many stores over the years, the cover of a printed catalogue. Each of those surfaces works at a different distance. Signage has to read from across a car park or a city street; a bag has to read from a few steps away, often folded or creased; a catalogue cover has to read on a doormat or a kitchen table.

Store identities also change as companies change hands. A name may be redrawn, shortened, recoloured or moved onto a new mark when a business is sold, merged or reorganised, and older versions can stay in view for years on buildings that are not refitted at once.

From Simon and Brookfield to Catalyst Brands.

The red wordmark has had one further interruption. On November 4, 2019, the Secured Finance Network, summarising a Forbes report, described a new JCPenney lifestyle store opened on November 1 in Hurst, Texas, under chief executive Jill Soltau, beneath a headline announcing a reimagined format and a new logo. English Wikipedia’s gallery dates that 2019 logo from November 1, 2019 to 2023, and says the red JCPenney wordmark used in 2008–2011 and 2013–2019 has been back in use since 2023.

Ownership has changed as often as the lettering. JCPenney filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May 2020, and English Wikipedia, citing an Associated Press report of November 11, 2020, says it emerged under the joint ownership of the mall operators Simon Property Group and Brookfield Properties, later joined by Authentic Brands Group as a minority owner. FashionUnited reported on January 9, 2025 that JCPenney and Sparc Group had merged to form Catalyst Brands in an all-equity transaction whose shareholders were Simon Property Group, Brookfield Corporation, Authentic Brands Group and Shein. The new group put JCPenney alongside Sparc’s Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer and other banners; Marc Rosen, formerly chief executive of JCPenney, became chief executive of Catalyst Brands, and Michelle Wlazlo was named brand chief executive of JCPenney. Catalyst Brands, FashionUnited said, is headquartered at JCPenney’s corporate offices in Plano. Catalyst Brands has owned JCPenney since 2025.

For a design guide, JCPenney shows a store name that has been shortened, boxed, squared and flag-coloured, and then returned each time to a red wordmark spelling out the founder’s name. The Golden Rule shopfront, the Penney’s signs, the 2011 box and the 2012 square each belong to a dated chapter. Compare it with Macy’s and Kohl’s, and with Sears, another American department-store name. For this guide we use Penney red, deep navy and shopfront white with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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