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From Converse's bankruptcy to Barnes & Noble's local shelves: 9 retail turnarounds

These retail brand comebacks, from Apple and Starbucks to Lego and Barnes & Noble, show how nine struggling brands rebuilt their businesses after periods of decline

In this selection, recovery rarely came from adding more. In most of the cases collected here, the turnaround began when a new or returning leader stripped the business back to what customers had valued in the first place. That might be a core product, a well-made cup of espresso, a plastic building brick or a bookstore shelf chosen by the people who work in the store.

That pattern runs through the nine retail brand comebacks below. They span consumer technology, coffee, toys, luxury fashion, footwear, electronics retailing, bookselling and casual apparel. Some of these companies came close to collapse or went through bankruptcy. Others had drifted away from their customers and lost ground to rivals or to changing tastes. The list is a selection, not a ranking. Each entry shows a different lever a company pulled to reverse its slide.

Leadership change is the most consistent thread. Several recoveries started with a chief executive who arrived from outside the company, in some cases from a different industry. Others began when a founder or longtime leader returned to a business they had helped build. Across these cases, the new leadership made calls their predecessors had not. Those included closing stores, cutting product lines, tightening control over licensing and handing decisions to local managers.

Physical stores are the second thread. Some of these brands faced direct pressure from online competition. Their answers did not involve abandoning stores. They reworked what happened inside them instead, through staff training, in-store service, pricing policy and local curation.

The third thread is focus. Companies that had expanded into too many products, ventures or audiences tended to recover by narrowing what they sold and who they sold it to.

The entries below cover one company each: who led the turnaround, when the key decisions were made and what changed as a result. The companies range from a computer maker that opened its own stores to a bookseller that let its managers choose what their own shops stocked. Together they show the specific choices that came before each recovery.

Apple's comeback under Steve Jobs and the first Apple Store

Steve Jobs returned to Apple $AAPL 1.48% through the company's purchase of NeXT and became interim CEO in September 1997. On May 19, 2001, Apple opened its first two retail stores. That gave the computer maker a place of its own to sell directly to shoppers.

The path back started with a deal. Apple announced its acquisition of NeXT, the company Jobs had been running, in December 1996. The purchase put Jobs back inside Apple.

His title at first carried a qualifier. An interim chief executive leads a company on a formally temporary basis. The board keeps the question of a permanent appointment open.

Outside money arrived in the same period. In August 1997, Microsoft $MSFT -0.16% invested $150 million in Apple. Microsoft, the software company behind the Windows operating system, was one of Apple's main competitors in personal computing.

New products followed. The iMac, a desktop computer, launched in August 1998. It reached the market under Jobs's leadership, before Apple sold any computers in stores it owned.

Retail was the next step. Ron Johnson led the effort to build Apple's stores. The first two opened on the same day. One was at Tysons Corner, Virginia, in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. The other was in Glendale, California, in the Los Angeles area.

A company that sells only through outside retailers depends on them for how its products are displayed and explained. It also depends on them for the service buyers receive. Running its own stores let Apple make those decisions itself, from layout and staffing to the customer experience after a sale.

The Genius Bar came out of this retail design. It is a counter inside Apple Stores where customers bring their devices for technical help and repairs. The setup places support in the same room as sales. A buyer with a problem can return to the store where the product was bought.

In order, the NeXT deal, the interim appointment, the Microsoft investment and the iMac came first. The stores followed in 2001. That sequence added direct retail to a business that had sold its computers through other companies' stores.

Starbucks' 2008 turnaround under Howard Schultz

Howard Schultz returned as Starbucks $SBUX 2.24% CEO in January 2008 and reset the chain around coffee quality. Within months, he closed U.S. company-operated stores for espresso retraining and announced the shutdown of 600 underperforming U.S. locations.

Schultz replaced Jim Donald in the top job. His........

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