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Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

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Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#301

Post by IWeldMelons »

bluGill wrote: post #32
wil421 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Costco is an upscale place to shop? I’ve never seen them lumped together with Whole Foods or even Apple. Edit: Wow I didn’t realize Costco’s profit margin was higher than Whole Foods, Wal Mart and almost a full percent above Kroger’s.

They are. You need to have a good amount of extra money to afford the membership and the cost of buying 6 months of toilet paper in advance. Those are cheap items that you will need, if you are not poor you probably don't even think about it. However when you are poor it doesn't matter if it is cheaper or not to buy in bulk because you don't have the cash to afford it. (you also are unlikely to have the storage space…

Do not forget about ALDI - it is cheaper than Costco, does not require buying in bulk, but the quality is stable and generally well worth the money. ALDI is the place to go for the working class.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#302

Post by tw04 »

guelo wrote: post #271
tw04 wrote: post #82

Sears died because of Lampert, that's the beginning and end of the story. While they were far from perfect, post-Kmart "acquisition" both the service and stores became garbage and he used Sears as a personal slush fund.

Lampert took over in 2013, they were already going down hill by that point. Sears was taken over by bankrupt Kmart in 2004 and the combined company started losing money by 2010.

What are you talking about? Lampert was running K-Mart in 2004... his hedge fund acquired their assets when they went bankrupt. He immediately turned around and took loans against all of K-Mart's real estate to fund the acquisition of Sears.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/6509683/ns/business-stocks_and_eco...

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#303

Post by PaulHoule »

xigency wrote: post #96
wombatpm wrote: post #5

Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box re…

I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears…

The high value of Sears real estate holdings alone distorts the valuation of the company and doesn't help in making good decisions for running the store.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#304

Post by grendelt »

I truly don't understand what's in this for Lampert. Why does he keep trying to resuscitate the company he hastened to its deathbed?

How does him offering $4.4B benefit him personally? That seems like pride/hubris/denial to think he could ever recoup that money or pull Sears out of the condition he put it in.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#305

Post by learc83 »

bpicolo wrote: post #219
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to be snarky, but there needs to be a name for selective amnesia when an idea that seems obvious in retrospect is ignored later on. In this case, the thing that made Amazon so great, before Prime existed, was that it had the "Things you might also like" section. AFAIK it was one of the first online stores that used machine learning to recommend new and related items you didn't realize you wanted and to have user…

Is that really a primary growth factor? I've never once acted on an Amazon recommendation, and it's always felt almost entirely useless - "you just bought a vacuum, here's 15 more vacuums just in case you're a vacuum-obsessed lunatic"

The recommendations were useful to me while I was still browsing, not so much after I'd made a purchase. It made browsing a lot easier.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#306

Post by mdesq »

erickhill wrote: post #3

Sears was my go-to place for tools for years. Then, at some stage, the quality noticeably changed and it started to feel like a cheap knock-off, like what happened to Stanley Tools ages ago. But I did very much appreciate their return-tool policy. I used that a few times. It was a great customer loyalty tactic.

Craftsman tools has its own story, but over the years they started creating lower quality tool lines and eroded the brand. It used to be a major go-to line of tools especially for entry-level professional mechanics (as I used to be) as they were very good quality US-made tools with a great warranty at a fraction of the price of Snap-on or the like.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#307

Post by kickopotomus »

babygoat wrote: post #294
kickopotomus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a golden parachute though. Those are retention bonuses being paid to management so that they don't lose their entire staff before they are able to liquidate remaining assets and close properly. Going out of business is a process. It is not some sort of overnight ordeal. Especially not for an organization as large as Sears.

That makes zero sense. How does management getting all that money keep their staff around? They'd use that money to pay the staff if that were true.

They need management/skilled workers to stay so they offer bonuses contingent on them staying on-board for some specified amount of time. You need people who know how to offload remaining inventory and other assets to clear the books. According to the article, this money is meant to be divided between ~300 corporate employees.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#308

Post by blairanderson »

xigency wrote: post #96
wombatpm wrote: post #5

Sears had everything. Global supply chain, check. Top notch distribution operation, check. System and infrastructure to take orders and handling billing, check. Name recognition and established customer base, check. They threw it all away, ending catalog operations in 1993 a year before Amazon.com opened in 1994. They owned part of Prodigy in 1984! Yet somehow thought it was a better move to expand into bigger box re…

I thought this as well until I heard a counter-point [0] which was very convincing. The reason Amazon is successful is not because you can shop online (from a catalog) and receive items in the mail. The reason Amazon is successful is because you can do those things and receive your items within two days. Before Prime existed, Amazon had very quick fulfillment, and after Prime two-day it became even better. The Sears…

Amazon's business model commands a continuously increasing selection and best-in-class customer experience.

Cannot succeed without both.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#309

Post by teej »

babygoat wrote: post #294
kickopotomus wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a golden parachute though. Those are retention bonuses being paid to management so that they don't lose their entire staff before they are able to liquidate remaining assets and close properly. Going out of business is a process. It is not some sort of overnight ordeal. Especially not for an organization as large as Sears.

That makes zero sense. How does management getting all that money keep their staff around? They'd use that money to pay the staff if that were true.

$25M is chump change at the scale of Sears, with 89,000 employees. It's only $280 per employee which is not nearly enough money to keep everyone working.

Re: Sears has another chance to avoid closing down

#310

Post by fatnoah »

RankingMember wrote: post #41
lotsofpulp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a good example to those that claim companies should pay employees liberally. Unless you're in a niche that people are willing to pay a margin for or serve upscale customers who also don't mind paying margins (Costco, Whole Foods, Nordstroms, Apple, etc), then you're going to lose business to competitors offering lower prices. In this situation, the only way to improve the well being of those whose labor isn't as…

> It's a good example to those that claim companies should pay employees liberally. Is it? Paying employees well isn't what killed Sears. Sears has been a ghost town for years, and anyone who's been in one in the past 20 years can probably tell you why. The customer experience simply sucks. Help is hard to find, checkout is slow, their warranties are garbage and a pain to exercise, and their once-great store brands h…

>checkout is slow

For me, this is it in a nutshell. I worked next door (as in a 30 foot walk) from a Sears and popped in to quickly grab a couple things in a 30 minute gap between meetings. In 10 minutes, I had what I wanted, and got in line to checkout. I was the 6th person in line...and eventually put my stuff down and walked out because I still hadn't managed to check out 20 minutes later. There was only one employee handling checkout, and that employee was moving at a slower-than-glacial pace. Even though several other employees were milling around the various departments, no one came over to help.

There are a lot of reasons Sears failed, but for me, making the most painful part of the process the part WHERE I GIVE THEM MONEY, was the last straw.

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