Forbes How To Save J.C. Penney: Shut Hundreds Of Stores, Say Business Professors “I’ve looked through J.C. Penney’s financials, and they’ve had the same number of stores – 1,100 – for the last five years,” said Bruce Clark, a professor of marketing at Northeastern University’s D’Amore-McKim School of Business. “Some of them are really old and really sad. I’m having a hard time believing all these stores are valuable.”