JCPenney Had to Dial Back Its Haircut Giveaway Because It Was Working Too Well

Members of JCPenney’s marketing team all put their thinking caps on this summer and decided that a great way to trap people in their stores and cajole them into buying pantsuits or sweatshirts was to offer free back-to-school haircuts to kids. CEO Ron Johnson, however, soon discovered that free back-to-school haircuts = complete pandemonium (the company gave away about 1.6 million haircuts in August), and so dialed back the stampede quotient a little bit by adding some haircut stipulations: only kids K through 6 could get a cool JCPenney ‘do, and said ‘dos would only be handed out on Sundays.