PLANO, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan 8, 2025--
JCPenney and SPARC Group today announced that they have combined to form a new organization, Catalyst Brands, creating an unmatched portfolio of six iconic retail banners that celebrate the essence of American style.
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Catalyst Brands brings together SPARC Group’s brands Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer, Lucky Brand and Nautica with JCPenney and its exclusive private brands, including Stafford, Arizona and Liz Claiborne. Catalyst Brands, which has served over 60 million customers over the past three years, has broad consumer reach through a robust distribution network of owned stores, e-commerce sites and wholesale partners.
Catalyst Brands Business Details and Ownership
Catalyst Brands launches with more than $9 billion of revenue, 1,800 store locations, 60,000 employees and $1 billion of liquidity and is poised to generate significant strategic and operational value. The combined Catalyst Brands organization is a joint venture formed in an all-equity transaction between JCPenney and SPARC Group, with shareholders Simon Property Group, Brookfield Corporation, Authentic Brands Group and Shein.
In addition, Catalyst Brands has sold the U.S. operations of Reebok and is exploring strategic options for the operations of Forever 21.
Leadership and Organizational Structure
Marc Rosen, formerly the chief executive officer of JCPenney, has become CEO of Catalyst Brands. There are three brand CEOs who will oversee the portfolio that report to Rosen. Michelle Wlazlo, formerly the chief merchandising and supply chain officer of JCPenney, has been promoted to Brand CEO of JCPenney. Natalie Levy continues her role as Brand CEO of Aéropostale, Lucky Brand and Nautica and Ken Ohashi will continue leading Brooks Brothers and has assumed responsibility of Eddie Bauer in his new role as Brand CEO of both brands. Kevin Harper, formerly an executive with Walmart, will join Catalyst Brands as chief operating officer. Marisa Thalberg, formerly the consulting chief marketing and brand officer of JCPenney, has become the chief customer and marketing officer of Catalyst Brands. Additional leadership appointments can be found here.
Catalyst Brands Proposition
“Catalyst Brands brings together the rich heritage of six unique brands with modern energy and a new vision for success. The word ‘catalyst’ reflects our drive to accelerate innovation and energy and amplify the impact of this powerhouse portfolio. Together, we bring scale, expertise and broad appeal to customers across America,” Rosen said. “For us, customers are at the heart of what we do. We have a shared belief that customers deserve fashion and style of great quality for any and every moment in life. We will leverage our resources and best-in-class industry talent to grow our brands further.”
With offerings that include business and formal fashion from Brooks Brothers, casual apparel for teenagers and young adults from Aéropostale, outdoor recreation clothing and gear from Eddie Bauer to everyday style for every family from JCPenney, and more, Catalyst Brands has expansive reach across market and customer segments. Catalyst Brands will integrate complementary strengths, including strong product design and sourcing capabilities, deep supplier relationships and a growing use of data-driven and AI technology to enhance its supply chain and inventory management capabilities and to deepen consumer relationships.
“Our relationships with more than 60 million customers and the deep data we have create a compelling consumer value proposition across our brands. We can design a more personalized shopping experience, offer unified loyalty and credit card programs, and ultimately, cross-sell more effectively. That’s one example of the many benefits we’ll see in this combination,” continued Rosen. “With a clean balance sheet, we’re in great position to move forward.”
Catalyst Brands is headquartered at the current corporate location of JCPenney in Plano, Texas with offices in New York, Los Angeles and Seattle.
ABOUT JCPENNEY
JCPenney is the shopping destination for America’s diverse, working families. With inclusivity at its core, the Company’s product assortment meets customers’ everyday needs and helps them commemorate every special occasion with style, quality and value. JCPenney offers a broad portfolio of fashion, apparel, home, beauty and jewelry from national and private brands and provides personal services including salon, portrait and optical. The Company and its 50,000 associates worldwide serve customers where, when and how they want to shop – from jcp.com to more than 650 stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.
In 2022, JCPenney celebrated 120 years as an iconic American brand by continuing its legacy of connecting with customers through shopping and community engagement. Please visit JCPenney’s Newsroom to learn more and follow JCPenney on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
ABOUT SPARC GROUP
SPARC Group is a full-service retail enterprise that drives product and commerce innovation through its multi-brand platform. As a dedicated operating partner for several prominent brands, SPARC delivers quality fashion and lifestyle products with a focus on outstanding customer service. The company operates retail stores, shop-in-shops, and eCommerce platforms in the U.S. while supporting leading wholesale accounts across North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific. The Catalyst Brands transaction does not affect the intellectual property owned by Authentic Brands Group which SPARC Group licenses (Aéropostale, Brooks Brothers, Eddie Bauer, Forever 21, Lucky Brand, and Nautica).
JCPenney and SPARC Group today announced that they have combined to form a new organization, Catalyst Brands, creating an unmatched portfolio of six iconic retail banners that celebrate the essence of American style. (Graphic: Business Wire)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — The ongoing effort to find a man who walked onto Brown University ’s campus during a busy exam season and shot nearly a dozen students in a crowded lecture hall has raised questions about the school's security systems and the urgency of the investigation itself.
A day after Saturday's mass shooting, officials said a person of interest taken into custody would be released without charges, leaving investigators with little actionable insight from the limited security video they had recovered and scrambling to develop new leads.
Law enforcement officials were still doing the most basic investigative work days after the shooting that killed two students and wounded nine, canvassing local residences and businesses for security camera footage and looking for physical evidence. That's left students and some Providence residents frustrated at gaps in the university’s security and camera systems that helped allow the shooter to disappear.
“The fact that we’re in such a surveillance state but that wasn’t used correctly at all is just so deeply frustrating,” said Li Ding, a student at the nearby Rhode Island School of Design who dances on a Brown University team.
Ding is among hundreds of students who have signed a petition to increase security at school buildings, saying that officials need to do a better job keeping the campus secure against threats like active shooters.
“I think honestly, the students are doing a more effective job at taking care of each other than the police,” Ding said.
Kristy dosReis, chief public information officer for the Providence Police Department, said that at no point did the investigation stand down even after officials appeared to have a breakthrough in the case, detaining a Wisconsin man who they now believe was not involved.
“The investigation continued as the scenes were still active. Nothing was cleared,” said dosReis.
The FBI put out a video timeline Tuesday that includes new footage of the second man of interest from before the attack. It shows him along quiet residential streets near campus. Authorities believe he was casing the area, Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief, said. Police and the FBI had released video and photographs of the man, who wore a mask in the footage captured before and after the attack.
FBI Boston Special Agent in Charge Ted Docks said a $50,000 reward was being offered for information that would lead to the identification, arrest and conviction of the shooter.
Docks described the investigation, including documenting the trajectory of bullets at the shooting scene, as “painstaking work.”
“We are asking the public to be patient as we continue to run down every lead so we can give victims, survivors, their families and all of you the answers you deserve,” Docks told reporters.
While Brown University is dotted with cameras, there were few in the Barus and Holley building, home of the engineering school that was targeted.
“Reality is, it’s an old building attached to a new one,” Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha told reporters about the lack of cameras nearby.
The Brown University president said Tuesday the campus is equipped with 1,200 cameras.
But the lack of campus footage of a suspect in the attack left police seeking tips from the public.
Katherine Baima said U.S. marshals came to her door on Monday, seeking footage from a security camera pointing toward the street.
“This is the first time any of us in my building, as far as I know, had heard from anyone,” Baima said.
Students said the school’s emergency alert system kept them relatively well-informed about the presence of an active shooter. But they were uncertain what to do during a prolonged campus lockdown.
Chiang-Heng Chien, a 32-year-old doctoral student in engineering, hid under desks and turned off the lights after receiving an alert about the shooting at 4:22 p.m. Saturday in a campus lab.
“While I was hiding in the lab, I heard the police yelling outside but my friends and I were debating whether we should open the door, since at that moment the shooter was believed to be (nearby),” he said in a text.
Law enforcement experts say colleges are often at a disadvantage when responding to threats like an active shooter. Their security officers are typically less trained and paid less than in other law enforcement departments. They also don’t always have close partnerships with better-resourced agencies.
Often, funding for campus police departments is not a top priority, even for schools with ample resources, said Terrance Gainer, a former Illinois law enforcement official who later served as the U.S. Senate’s sergeant-at-arms.
“They just aren’t as flush in law enforcement as you would think. They don’t like a lot of uniformed presence, they don’t like a lot of guns around,” said Gainer, who is now a consultant. “Whether it’s Brown or someone else, a key question is, what type of relationship do they have with the local police department?”
At Utah Valley University, where conservative leader Charlie Kirk was assassinated by a shooter on a school building roof last summer, the undersized campus police department never asked neighboring agencies to assist with security at the outdoor Kirk event that attracted thousands, an Associated Press review found.
Providence has an emergency alert system, but it switched from a mobile app to a web-based system in March. The new system requires someone to register online to receive alerts — something not all residents knew.
Emely Vallee, 35, lives about a mile (1.6 kilometers) from Brown with her two young children. She said she received “absolutely nothing” in alerts. She relied instead on texts from friends and the news.
Vallee had expected to be notified through the city’s 311 app, but hadn’t realized that Mayor Brett Smiley phased out the app in March. Smiley said his administration sent out multiple alerts the day of the shooting using the new 311 system and has continued to send them.
Hailey Souza, 23, finished her shift at a smoothie shop just off-campus minutes before the shooting. Everything seemed normal and quiet, Souza said.
But driving home, she saw a boy bleeding on the sidewalk. “Then everyone started running and screaming,” she said. Souza said she saw a bystander rip off his T-shirt to help.
The shop Souza manages, In The Pink, is a block from the engineering building. One of the shooting victims, Ella Cook, was a regular at the store, Souza said. Cook had come in a few days earlier and said her last final was Saturday.
Souza later learned that police came by the store to tell her co-workers about an active shooter. But Souza never received an emergency alert. “Nothing,” she said.
Wieffering, Tau and Slodysko reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kimberlee Kruesi and Matt O’Brien in Providence and Michael Casey in Boston contributed to this report.
Visitors pause at a makeshift memorial for the victims of Saturday's shooting, at the Van Wickle Gate at Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, R.I.(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Members of the FBI Evidence Response Team search for evidence near the campus of Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
A member of the FBI Evidence Response Team searches for evidence near an ivy-covered wall following the shooting at Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Visitors pause at a makeshift memorial for the victims of Saturday's shooting, at the Van Wickle Gate at Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, R.I.(AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Pedestrians ask FBI agents, on the sidewalk on Cooke St. for updates, in Providence, R.I., two days after a shooting occurred on Brown University's campus, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (Lily Speredelozzi/The Sun Chronicle via AP)
Members of the FBI Evidence Response Team search for evidence near the campus of Brown University, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025, in Providence, R.I. (AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)
Community flowers, notes and mementos are placed in a makeshift memorial display in front of Brown University's Van Wickle gates, in Providence, R.I., two days after a shooting took place on Brown University's campus, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (Lily Speredelozzi/The Sun Chronicle via AP)
A community member looks at flowers, notes and mementos in a makeshift memorial display sitting in front of Brown University's Van Wickle gates, in Providence, R.I., two days after a shooting took place on the university's campus, Monday, Dec. 15, 2025. (Lily Speredelozzi/The Sun Chronicle via AP)
