I have a inside source at abacus advisors and the plan is to shut all remaining Sears and Kmarts no later than 3/2020. The reason why they did not close the remaining stores this year is there arent enough liquidators to do the job.
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Malls are cratering. Tiger/Abacus and friends have a lot more to liquidate than Sears.
There is NO shortage of liquidation consultants.......
There is a shortage of fools who would become a vendor for transformco.. you do not get paid until 6 weeks out. Your bonus may not get paid,you may not get paid.
You bill 2200 per week and in 6 weeks you may get half and there is always a balence.
Your a 1099 employee as well and that is a pain.
You front your hotels and travel for a month.
So again no shortage of people to liquidate but the economy is good a most good retailers are working or in the data base of hilco,gorden brothers and sb360.
I know i just quit this past round.
Abacus is eddies pet program
After this abacus is also over so why work for them and have no future.
The 1200 per week bonus is also a risk.......
Kmart, yes. Sears, not yet. Soon though for both. Summer, Sears will be out of 99% of malls, and Kmart will be gone.
I know there is a shortage of liquidators because several closing stores in our market are “sharing liquidators” simultaneously which makes everything more difficult. They are juggling 2 or 3 disasters and the whole process is a confused chaotic mess! They are in it for the money and do not give a damn about the process or the people. This is a sad and sorry mess.
Why the hell would anyone want to vacation in Guam. The Island is a total sh– hole rock in the pacific, over run by Japanese tourists and lazy islanders on “island time”.
Bruce was Eddie's friend too. Look how that worked out
The owner of Abacus is Eddies friend. That is why we use them...
Yes there may be other liquidators.. but It would not surprise me if slimey eddie had some stake or other backdoor agreement with Abacus to recover some of the liquidation costs. I would imagine exclusive rights to liquidation of hundreds of stores nationwide would get you a pretty good deal or kickback.
hope so!
The feds and IRS really, really need to investigate Seritage, ESL and Eddie Lampert. Too many people are getting burned by this man.
Sears has used every major liquidator in the past. There's a lot more out there than Abacus. Great American, Gordon Bros, Hilco and the rest will all happily liquidate Sears and quickly, even though they all hate Eddie's guts for what went down during Ch 11 in January.
People were calling this the world's slowest liquidation 14 years ago. What do you think Seritage is? Sears was always a way to transfer money into Eddie's pockets and pay Seritage's bills until they could sell the land for a profit, but his incompetence drove Sears into the ground way faster than he expected, especially once he had the hubris to become CEO himself.
Do you REALLY think Eddie would have delayed liquidating for this long if this is what he intended all along? And if he did intend to liquidate then isn't it kind of nice that he is phasing it out, so as people are laid off they can find jobs before the next batch of people are laid off, etc. I think he had the right intentions.
1} The road to hell is paved with good intentions
2} Eddie has found a way to actually make money off of the structured demolition of this company.
3} Sometimes it's better to rip the band-aid off quickly, the pain doesn't last as long.
4) Vacationing in Guam sounds like an amazing idea
One thing I've learned managing strategic planning at Sears, is that no matter how bad one plan is failing, there's always another plan that's failing worse.
I believe that there are multiple plans in mind right now. One is to try to give it a go in a much smaller amount of stores and Hometown. It hurts that there are/were so many layoffs, but the company is much smaller than it was and therefore unfortunately no need for all of us. Another plan is to liquidate as a last resort, and they probably would have had to put that out there to Abacus Advisors, so they could plan accordingly if that is the result. There never is just one plan. Do you REALLY think Eddie would have delayed liquidating for this long if this is what he intended all along? And if he did intend to liquidate then isn't it kind of nice that he is phasing it out, so as people are laid off they can find jobs before the next batch of people are laid off, etc. I think he had the right intentions. It was just the execution and timing that were messed up. Gofer should have worked and Service Live. I was laid off too, so I am not just saying this from the outside looking in without any hardship. I appreciate that we weren't all laid off at once. That would have been awful.
The last round of cuts got rid of most of the buyers
Laying off buyers now means there will be no fall merchandise so the plan has to be closing the rest of fls before July
It will be longer than 3/2020, the 96 current will be done by January, the next wave will be most likely another 96, and the leftover 82 will be last. A realistic schedule will be 96 more stores to start liquidation in February and the final 82 to go in April. This makes sense given the lack of inventory in mowers and tractors, and outdoor spring items and these things are apparently not being replaced. Realistically —we are probably looking at May to early June. I do want a job with abacus if they are looking for people to go to Guam to liquidate, I need a vacation.
I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they’re getting rid of Kmart, but I’d be a little surprised if they axed Sears FLS stores
I deliberately maintain some ignoramce and distance from leadership talk.
- (i.maintain my sanity a little better that way), but i believe that they want to sell the hard lines out of these.locations and keep kenmore craftsman and diehard alive through this network....and expand locations in a much smaller square footage per store plan. Commercial b2n customers.need tjose bramds amd they actuallt have value amd so does this market. Amazon vant sell service.reair amd distribute these items even close to what's taken 100 years to perfect. Still hope.for kenmore esp. Via tje b2b unit. Believe.
There won't be any inventory left to transfer to closing stores.
Remaining store's have to once again clean out inventory and transfer to closing store's.
What about KCD and Kenmore Direct?
I believe that.
Same for Hometown stores?