Ron Johnson’s Enjoy Technology Files for Bankruptcy

Enjoy Technology, a retail startup founded by former Apple and J.C. Penney exec Ron Johnson, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Thursday, mere months after it made its stock market debut. The company’s liquidity has dwindled while its business has suffered from staffing shortages. Enjoy, which operates mobile retail stores, went public in October through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Enjoy said in a filing that it plans to sell its assets in the United States to the technology repair company Asurion.

Total Retail’s Take: Johnson has had quite the interesting retail career, and many were closely watching how his latest venture, Enjoy Technologies, would pan out. He’s best known for helping to create Apple’s lauded retail business as well as for trying to turn around the J.C. Penney department store chain, albeit unsuccessfully. Johnson was with J.C. Penney from 2011 to 2013, a period in which his strategy of ending price markdowns and a reliance on coupons alienated the retailer’s core customers. At Enjoy, the business was negatively impacted as SPAC investors started to take back their money and the business was left with less cash, court filings show. As for what the bankruptcy filing and sale of Enjoy’s business means for Johnson, that has yet to be made public. What we do know is that people will be watching what comes next for Johnson.