Sears/Kmart on the way out..........finally?

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I will not be buying Kenmore

Partly because of these problems I will not be buying a Kenmore appliance. Also Sears charges about double for their service contracts compared to Home Depot.

My local Sears store at Arden Fair Mall is one Anchor and is very nice. They recently installed ceiling recessed LED lighting, a major cost for them. The store is clean and well maintained. But like all Sears stores it just doesn't have a lot of good choices other than the Craftsman department and the Appliance department. The TV department was pretty large but was reduced to about 20% of the size it was.

The other anchor stores are JCPenny, Macy's and Nordstroms. JCPenny and Macy's are having their own problems and are closing lots of stores each year.

I thought Jeff Bezos could buy Sears and clear the stores out and make 1/2 of the store a warehouse for local distribution of Amazon stuff. The other 1/2 could be a Amazon retail store, stocked with the best selling Amazon products. That stock would probably include clothing and overall, would be much more up to date than Sears. But Jeff would have to wait until the Bankruptcy and Liquidation to really drive the price of those stores to rock bottom.
 
Yes Ben,

men in overalls since Andrew Carnegie hired Pinkerton's security to beat up the steel mill picketers. I forget if it was at the Homestead works, or Eliza Furnace.
Sears stores were never even unionized, and unions got most of the blame for what caused mass outsourcing.
I doubt we'll ever see Walmart workers grow a set and organize either.
Maybe they get profit sharing like Sears employees did up until about 1980. That's when they should have unionized.

I think Kenmore will also fall by the wayside even if the brand gets a new owner.
Whirlpool can maintain production of that and Maytag to supply Lowes, Home Depot, Menards, etc.
 
the point I was making was it was men in overalls and jeans, by the sweat of their brow, who made America what it used to be.

 

Then along came a plethora of freshly minted MBA from Harvard and it was all downhill from there.  hence the men in denim vs the men in suits comparison.
 
Some very smart

men came out of Harvard, etc. Not all of them are bad and greedy.
Lee Iacocoa for one. I think he went to Penn Sate, or U of Pa.
I've read both of his books, and he is very unbiased to labor. He taught me it's a two way street.
When I reached middle level management, that how I treated my employees who were union. They have bills to pay also. You attract more respect by being repsectful.
Integrity is what you do when no ones watching.
Say that to a person who is lax, and they think.
 
.
It's different this time..."going concern" guidance means they are headed for bankruptcy protection and/or a swin-deal which enriches Eddie all the more.
They do so to avoid lawsuits and other legal issues later on...otherwise we would not be hearing this now.
 
Bottom line

more companies, and ultimately workers, have been 8cked over by educated idiots boasting their freshly minted MBA than you can shake a stick at. 

 

Nothing inherently wrong with an MBA. But letters after one's name will never be a substitute for good business acumen as well as an appreciation for the very people who make your company.  Along with understanding your market and ultimately, customer.

 

I've never been a member of the graduate letter club where the more you have after your name, the merrier.  A college degree will never replace common sense. Unfortunately, that seems to be the panacea today, hire an MBA from someplace, better if he/she has an accounting background, and voila! Problem solved.

 

Not hardly. I've said it before and I'll say it again........the best way to piss your company down the toilet, public or private, union or non-union, is to place a beancounter in charge of things.   And I'll start with Mcnamara trying to run the Vietnam war like he managed Ford, speadsheets and exit strategies galore but not a lick of common sense.
 
It depends

on the bean counter though. MacNamara was more of a legislative kingpin than an accountant.
Ford is a family owned company still today by 51 percent. The failure and marketing oversight that made the Edsel was made by he and Henry Ford II finalizing.
Iacoca oversaw the Mustang, LTD being an upscale Galaxie, Marquis and Pinto successes, and they still booted him.
As for Viet Nam, regardless of who was running the war, it was a waste of money, and human life. Today it is embracing a free market economy.
 
Actually Mcnamara fought against the Edsel, it was Ernest Breech that lobbied HFII for it so as to have 5 divisions to compete against GM's 5 divisions.  For a brief time in the late 50's there was even the Continental division of FoMoCo.

 

Iacocca got booted because he was a threat to the Ford kingdom.  HFII even said he could not envision Iacocca succeeding him as CEO; it had nothing to do with Lee's performance, money wise, but everything to do with HFII ego and preserving the Ford family legacy.
 
Iacocca

Was just plain too good at everything - design, sales, engineering, administration, bookkeeping and staff loyalty.

A major threat to a scion of a great company who had mediocre talent, at best.

Chrysler was lucky to get him. 
 
Lee Iacocca...

went to Lehigh in Bethlehem, not Penn State or U Penn, as did James Ward Packard... it seems it's alums do well in the car biz. I almost went there but didn't, and a good thing as I wouldn't have met my wife of 45 years at MD! Lehigh is still a great university for science and engineering though.

As for Sears, not even an Iacocca could save it at this point, there's nothing left to save.
 
Vacerator...

You hit the nail squarely on the head...exactly. Things continue to change. Very often technology is the grease for the wheels. Retailers like Walmart and Target, Macy's and Kohl's are on the same road as Sears. There are no exits or turnoffs. 

[this post was last edited: 3/23/2017-15:25]

twintubdexter-2017032313314609073_1.jpg
 
Well Eddie said he wants to transform Sears into an "asset light" organization.

 

Looks like that will happen sooner rather than later when the buzzards come a calling.
 
It's hard to say what will happen. Yes, they've been failing for years so who knows. They still have too many stores though, in relation to their sales.

If they should go under I could see another retailer like Lowe's buying the Kenmore brand...it could become their "house" brand...or Home Depot for that matter.

I still think they should have switched to a wholesale club platform. Combining Sears and KMart under 1 roof. But they certainly don't have the money to do that now...unless someone decided to buy them.
 
I just had a paradoxically pleasant trip to Sears today--picking up an online order and replacing a Craftsman lopping shear...the salesperson in Lawn and Garden handled the replacement (at least 12 years old) of the old lopping shear with a slightly sheepish "you know you need the receipt"...it long predated the Craftsman Club/shopping club/... so she was satisfied when I gave her my shopping club number--rang it out and sent me on my way with a smile. It was "good old Sears" and they seemed to have reasonable staffing at 4 pm on a Friday. Was in and out of the online area in 4 minutes (met their service levels) and left with a smile while the manager and a trainee worked together on giving me the merchandise....wandered through the appliance department and there were a few shoppers and the excess sales people were apparently working on some online training or something. Apparel was pretty dire with huge numbers of clearance signs, but the entire store was nicely stocked, just not as busy as they would like. This was at Oakland Mall---a large mid-grade mall in metro Detroit which would likely be a premier location for them. I can only say "yikes" at what more marginal locations would be like. Metro Detroit has got to be one of their stronger markets--they're only just now closing some of the duplicate K-Marts, and the ones remaining are reasonably busy.
 

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