My Kmart in the northeast must have lost 60 sales yesterday because we have no plants. We have vegetables but people want plants. I'm a cashier. People just walked out all day without buying anything. Really sad.
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At the last Kmart that closed in my city (it's been 2 years now), one of the employees said that an elderly woman who lived in the neighborhood near the store would volunteer to come in and water the plants because the store wasn't paying employees to do it. The woman said she hated to watch the plants die. At first, they rejected her offer because you can't just have a stranger doing work for free but then eventually they just gave her a key to get into the garden center area, and she came in every morning for a few years to water the plants.
You know how in game theory if both sides cooperate they both go free but if both screw each other they just go to jail? Eddie's the guy who always goes to jail because everyone knows he'll screw you over every time.
@itst
Eddie didn’t want a prepackaged. He wanted to squeeze every last drop of blood from the stone. A few thousand lost in plants sales vs millions in savings on the company purchase. He knew no one wanted it and the longer he waited for his offer the more he saved. If 60 people walked out without a $5 plant but he saved $40 million you really think he cares?
Our Garden Shop is whatever didn't sell last year -- including snow shovels and ice melt -- and no live goods whatsoever. We are near a Lowe's so customers are going straight to them when they discover we have nothing for them to buy.
Most years we had a underwhelming selection of live goods anyway. Our Garden Shop is pretty empty and pathetic. At least there is no customer access to the "yard" anymore. The doors were spray painted black earlier this year.
@1wml I do understand the bankruptcy process, and if Edward Lampert had done a competent bankruptcy, they could have had it prepackaged, played nice with all parties, and been out of bankruptcy inside of six weeks. They could have done marketing and reassured vendors with Eddie's faith and credit with ESL's collateral as well, but at no point did he proffer his own cash, even with Transform. This is Lampert's failure through and through, the lack of marketing, the loss of customers, the loss of money, the loss of vendors and their relationships, the inability to maintain and turnover inventory and the rest of it. Because he refuses to heed the advice of people who actually understand retail, and Sears' nonstop turnover rate since he acquired the company, it can be said that he single-handedly ran the company into the ground.
Since there are only 200 Kmarts why didn't HE give the store managers a budget based on previous sales and allow them to out and buy some flowers and materials? Another blown opportunity.
You just don’t understand the bankruptcy process. First off at that point it’s in the hands of a trustee, arrangements are made but the agreements would have been made around January around the time it looked like liquidation was imminent. No buyer/purchaser would enter into selling plants to a company that wouldn’t be in business. The company would have been completely liquidated by mid April on the late side, who would have sent flowers? Cmon be real.
A few stores, with local agreements, probably had long enough to get some stuff.
Just what were the 3 stooges doing the entire bankruptcy instead of planning the way forward? Oh that's right, alienating vendors and contractors, sitting on their thumbs, not planning a marketing campaign, all while managing to lose colossal billions during the friggin' Holiday Season, which is why all these stores have lost all their customers and every Kmart is a poor man's Dollar Tree. Eddie picked these r----ds, and anyone who's tried to effect change or had an ounce of retail acumen was driven out by Eddie's frustrating incompetence.
Our garden center is closed. All plants and trees on the front sidewalk along with mulch ready to be stolen . We have grills and decor and some patio sets but no way like other years. Rest of the store is empty with dollar junk here and there. No go forward plan here.
We've got plants, but they're all out on the front sidewalk rather than in our old garden shop. I can tell they're not being watered nearly enough, and I wonder how many are just being carried off during the day and especially overnight.
Because to the vast variety of vendors needed to fully stock a Kmart. It appears the 200 Kmarts are taking the biggest beating in terms of product. vs. a Sears.
@yge - You are a broken record. You keep making the same tired excuses for Eddie's incompetence at running a retail organization. The SHLD bankruptcy would have been no surprise to Eddie, so arrangements for the continuing operation of the remaining stores within Transform Holdco should have been made many months prior. Instead, Eddie is just following his same disastrous formula that drove SHLD straight into the abyss. The fact is that Eddie has no intention of running a successful nor ongoing retail organization. He is strictly in the business of monetarizing assets and selling them off to the highest bidder.
I feel like a broken record, the orders for most of that stuff had to be placed before Eddie took over. Plants take time to grow. The other stuff much of it takes months from China.
With 200 Kmarts you’ll have to have had logistics in place to immediately source from dozens of smaller greenhouses that have shorter lead times.
Only stores that would have gotten a thing had contracts like that already in place
Same with our Kmart. But you know, it is their own damn fault for not hiring anyone to actually work the Garden Center to keep watering and watching the plants. Instead of that last year, a sh-- ton of them died. Also yesterday our electronic section is gone as well.
They still have garden centers in Kmart ??