With over 1,200 stores in all 50 states as well as Puerto Rico, Mexico, and Chile, J.C. Penney Company, Inc. (JCPenney) is the largest department-store retailer and catalog merchant in the United States, with licensing agreements for its products throughout the world. The company boomed in its early days in Western mining towns because it offered all goods at "one fair price" and brought fashionable goods from the East to remote towns. The company struggled through the 1970s, as upstart companies like Wal-Mart began selling goods at discount prices and long-time rivals like Sears gave JCPenney tough competition in the hardware and appliance departments. A major reorganization of the company from a mass marketer into a fashion-oriented national department store during the 1980s, along with the relocation of its corporate headquarters from New York to less expensive Texas, put JCPenney in a strong position to compete in the tough retailing climate of the 1990s.
