oooh oooh that stench.

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

W

washman

Well-known member
Joined
Sep 8, 2013
Messages
1,972
Location
o
Can't you smell that stench............

the smell of stench surrounds you...........

Ok, a lame redo of That Smell by Skynard but here's the latest list of sears/kmart stores closing.

2 are of note to me. One in b-town where I worked whilst I earned my BS degree and the other is right here Butler where I live.

941 kmart stores.............once upon a time there were over 2,500.

Informal poll time:

Who wants to bet by EOY 2017 at the latest, Kmart/sears packs it all in and files Ch 7. Eddie gets his cash bonuses and employees and creditors get the shaft.

Any takers.............

whiskey bottle, brand new car,
oak tree you're in my way...........
 
10 years is not all that long to liquidate Sear's.  Once America's largest retailer and over 100 years to build.  Every 0.5 cent will be squeezed out.  Some prime locations have been sold for the real estate then leased back by Sears.  OP is right imho,  there will not be a thing left to sell.  I feel sorry for the appliance kids of the future, there was magic in the appliance department back in the day.  Back to the original topic, the stock price "shld"  still swings a bit wildly and unpredictably, to the casual observer.

 
 
It is a foregone conclusion

IMHO. I've worked retail for many years and support P/L data applications for our stores. You cannot close off outlets year after year after year after year and not put money into remaining outlets to increase sales in order to offset the loss of revenue from outlets that HAVE closed.

Perhaps there is some fuzzy math out there that says the above strategy (and Eddy Lamperts) does work but I have yet to see it.

retail 101 is this>>>>sales minus cost of goods sold (COGS) equals profit.

Why does Chinamart (aka walmart) get such good pricing and terms from vendors? Simple, it places HUGE orders, enough in fact to fill an entire container ship from China. Now sears holdings will place orders (probably on a cash up front basis) for 900 stores? You think Vendor X is going to bust ball getting product into the Kmart distribution centers when Chinamart is 80% of his business? I think not.

""The decision to close stores is a difficult but necessary step as we take aggressive actions to strengthen our company, fund our transformation and restore Sears Holdings to profitability," said Sears Holdings CEO Edward Lampert in a statement".

You simply have to read this statement to believe it. Utter stupidity on Eddy's part. Fewer outlets=fewer sales=less free cash flow to pay the bills=suck ass GMROI and Inventory turn rate=a downward spiral that God himself would struggle to turn around.

Ok so perhaps 2017 is a bit aggressive, but I will modify the timeline to 2020 at the absolute latest.

If you are a collector of retail nostalgia, now is the time to get some Sears/Kmart branded product. Perhaps it will have an online Ebay revival like Billy Beer did some years ago.

Then again, perhaps not..............
 
The former KMart store here is supposed to become a Publix supermarket early in 2017.The shopping center the old store is in -a ghost town.The Hancock fabrics is closing.lots of store space for reant.The motor vehicle Adm office is there-probably it adn the Office Depot are keeping that place going.Hope the Publix can help.Remember when that shopping plaza was busy!The Office Depot was a ghost town,too.Nobody but me in it with the store employees.Walked the shopping plaza after renewing my car tags.The Sears store on the other side of town still hangs in there.A Hobby Lobby store is supposed to open sometime not far from the Sears place.
 
I know hindsight is 20/20 (and often better, IMO), but it seems like in the last 20 years so many established companies have made so many bone-headed decisions that it boggles the mind.

 

On one level it screams "Global Conspiracy!"... But I can't picture the requisite coordination of so many independent forces, each with their own agenda. So I don't buy it.

 

I'm leaning toward the notion that decisions are increasingly made by people who really don't know know very much about whatever they're deciding. But why would this be happening?

 

Any thoughts?

 

Jim

 

 

 
 
thoughts;??

Jim, everything is slowly conglomerating.
Items may be marketed under different brands, but all the parts and components will be shared.
Cabinets and or consoles may have a different style, but we will not have a choice in manufacturer.
Competition will be only imagined, and a small maker will not be able to compete all.
The establishment will say it keeps costs down. Really, when you have to replace an appliance after 5 or 7 years on average?
Eventually most factories will be fully automated with robots doing everything, including the logistical transport loading.
 
Sears and K Mart

are supposed to begin liquidation sales of closing stores in the coming weeks.
I've already heard reports of only half the lights on in them.
 
I know this is Sears

but someone brought up chinamart (Walmart) and I've heard a lot of their stores are closing too! There is even a wild and crazy conspiracy theory that closed Walmarts are going to turn into FEMA camps of all things. I read that Amazon is killing them. People find it easier to find what they want on amazon or online and have it shipped to them, instead of going to walmart to fight crowds, finding the exact product they want, etc.

So the same thing that has been happening to Sears over the years could be happening to Walmart too.
 
Regarding WalMart:

 

What exactly are these "FEMA camps" in the world of conspiracy theorists? I keep hearing/reading about them and there's NEVER an explanation.

 

"fight crowds"? Well, if WalMart hired enough people to staff all the registers and stock all the shelves, shopping there wouldn't be such an ordeal.

 

"everything slowly conglomerating", etc.    All the dystopian scifi I read as a kid in the 70's seems to be coming true.

 

Jim

 

 
 
Honestly,

I don't know enough about it other than a video I clicked on where someone was describing this CRAZY theory how 90% of the population is 15 min's or less from a walmart and walmart closed several stores in 2014 citing plumbing problems that would take six months to fix. And one walmart in Montana or Oregon or somewhere in the northwest was closed and actually turned into a real prison. Crazy stuff..

I don't know how much/ if any of it is true. Sometimes I think a lot of these wild conspiracy vids are just people hoping that people will click on them, watch them, so they make money.

But I did Google walmart closings and I think they are closing a lot of their stores.
 
K-Mart

Is getting killed because stores like Walmart, Walgreens, and other retailers carry the same merchandise in whole or part.

All retailers are being hit with growing cost of doing business (rents, labor, etc...) at a time when competition from other sources including the Internet make rasing prices difficult. Online giant Amazon.com is killing everyone but as more and more consumers go online to do their shopping Amazon has plenty of company.
 
kmart is suffering from Sewell Avery syndrome

That was the chap that helped run Wards into the ground by refusing to allocate development money for Wards after WW2. He believed that an massive depression was at hand and that wards would be best served hanging onto every dollar it could. Sears among others did develop more properties after the war and prospered.

Like wards, Kmart has done nothing more than attempt, poorly at that, to manage cash flow.

No upgrades to stores, distribution, marketing, store ops. Absolutely nothing. It is akin to buying a new car but refusing to put one thin dime into maintenance and then wondering why it fell apart before it was paid off.

Scary thing is, I don't know for the life of me what Kmart could do at this point. Walmart has the underbelly sewn tight for super deep discount. Target took it slightly upscale which would leave a very thing area in which to operate. Dollah General and Family Dollah have the welfare crowd market sewn up too. Kinda like the burger world. You have mickey d, Wendys, and Hardees. Is there enough market space left to accommodate 3 burger chains? Is there enough market to accommodate 3 discount retailers?

Like the car business, discount retail has changed. You have online merchants, smaller retailers all hacking out bits of the market. Once upon a time, GM did enough business to support 6 car divisions, including Saturn. Look at them now. I never dreamed Olds and Pontiac would be killed off. Or Plymouth. Or Mercury.

In an are we are all familiar with, remember when ABC, Kelvinator, Tappan, Caloric, Gibson, Westinghouse and others competed with a line of appliances? Where are they now?

Remember Zenith, RCA, Motorola, Westinghouse, Admiral, and Magnavox making boob tubes?

Kmart will die off perhaps taking Sears with it. In either case, neither will return to being a formidable competitor in the marketplace.
 
@ Askolover

I know, right! Another lady in another state had said the same thing. They built this new walmart, she was an employee and they told all employees that the walmart was closing. Didn't give them notice or anything. She was being interviewed in the parking lot still in uniform. She said they literally had just built the store MONTHS ago...

Now, Sears and Kmart or any of the fast food chains never did anything like this, did they? Open a brand new store, only to close it months later, at least in 2 occasions I know of.
 
Organizational insanity is an amazing and frightening thing to watch. It's stunning how a group of people, who individually are smart, can persist in doing what doesn't work, in the belief that somehow something will magically change and it will all start working.

I guess time does this to everything, but it is sad to see once great organizations fail to adapt to changing conditions, and sometimes it's hard to understand. My dad still loves his mid-1960s Zenith console stereo, and he tells me that in the day, Zenith was regarded as an upscale and higher-quality brand -- maybe not quite as much as say McIntosh, but almost. But they failed to make the transition to component stereo in the late '60s. In my own industry, I've often wondered how it was that Pratt & Whitney and Rolls-Royce successfully made the transition from piston airplane engines to jets, and Curtiss-Wright didn't.
 
There are two of those WalMart "neighborhood" markets near me --both are slated to close.Both Supercenters will stay open.Remember when RCA and Westinghouse made transmitters to go with those TV's!Worked on LOTS of RCA AM,FM,and TV transmitters as well as their TV's.Now RCA,Westinghouse,and others was killed off by a broadcast supplier Harris.Consider them the "Sears" of Broadcast equipment.Oh yes,RCA used to provide cinema equipment.Now its Christie.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top