Dive Brief:

• J.C. Penney has been testing a partnership with heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems company Trane in a small number of stores since November, The Dallas Morning News reports. 

• The move comes amid a push this year to take advantage of Sears’ decline in home appliance sales. "Sears is donating share in appliances,” CEO Marvin Ellison told analysts this summer. "We have no aspirations to be No. 1 in market share for appliances. To do that, we have to own the inventory. But we think we can be disruptive and can be convenient to our customers." 

• The discount department store is also boosting some furniture offerings in partnership with furniture company Ashley and will sell flooring through a partnership with carpet and flooring company Empire Today. 

Dive Insight:

J.C. Penney is still working on its turnaround, but it’s back from the dead, and analysts are giving it props for its new emphasis on home, beauty and special sizes apparel. The retailer this spring also said it’s expanding its window-covering sales by allocating another 25% of floor space to curtains, blinds, shades and decorate hardware: Before the recent recession, J.C. Penney reportedly was helping a third of U.S. households to dress their windows. 

Ellison arrived at J.C. Penney last year from Home Depot in the midst of the retailer's turnaround. Since then, J.C. Penney has looked to be making good on those turnaround efforts but hit a roadblock in Q3, with total and same-store sales going negative thanks to soft demand for apparel. 

The retailer also appears to be enthusiastically embracing malls at a time when many malls are struggling. Mall landlords, facing the disappearance of their long-time anchors, are open to negotiation, leaving J. C. Penney with leverage on rent that in some areas is boosting profits. The retailer has fewer than 10 stores that aren’t making money, Ellison has said. 

J.C. Penney has also recently boosted the number of in-store Sephora cosmetics operations. That plus its home, salon and fine jewelry categories were the retailer's top performing divisions during the third quarter. “Along with the continued roll out of Sephora concessions, these category developments are positive inasmuch as they make JCP far less reliant on apparel,” Neil Saunders, CEO of retail research agency and consulting firm Conlumino, told Retail Dive last month. “This offsets some of the vagaries and fluctuations of the fashion business and helps transform JCP into a proper department store destination which gives consumers many reasons to visit.”