Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Yeah right straight out of Compton,NWA fools

Man, that must be some good $#!t the OP is smoking.

Hey, Eddie, quit posting about yourself here. Nobody cares any more. We all know your true motives and you couldn't care less about us peasants in the stores.

What everyone fails to see, is that Lampert always saw the merger as a retailing bonanza with real estate extras. He wanted to sell the real estate to prop up the cash flow retail side, using the cash to fund general operations until some level of profitability was obtained. When this was not reached, both sides were scavenged. Seratige did not matter, the real estate could have stayed within sears. All it really did was make some paperwork and legal work for some cronies. As the remaining pieces were sold off to fund the business, the downward spiral continued. The total value difference at the start vs. now is astounding. So much money disappeared into oblivion.

If Lampert knew that e-commerce was the future he would have seen that he had an opportunity by reviving the sears and roebuck catalog in an online format before Amazon took off. Converting some KMarts into Sears Essentials was an id–t idea
There was no way the two brands could be combined. While he did invest in new layouts for those stores while not bothering with trivial things such as new roofs to prevent leaks during storms he did not spend one cent converting those layouts back to KMart layouts once those stores switched back to their former brand. The layouts were not real KMarts. The only investment he made at that point was changing the name on the buildings. He put lipstick on a pig and fooled no one.

As said you must have a compelling environment, current and desired merchandise and a staff to tie all buying options together. Sears never had any of that under Eddie Lambert because that was not the purpose.

Whatever. Sears is toast. Kmart is toast. Transformco is toast. Eddie's investments are toast. Eddie's friends' investments are toast. Misunderstood and picked on little boy? Who cares. It's over. Bicker about it all you want.

The OP is right, in as much that Eddie did throw a lot of things at a lot of walls and nothing ever stuck. There’s good reason why Eddie failed in every endeavor-

• Lack of respect for Associates - he failed to take care of his employees - you mention Pebble, which was a tool that associates were forced to use in which Eddie would then publicly humiliate them with scathing responses to their posts. He regularly belittled executives in meetings, trying to always prove he was the smartest man in the room (most powerful with the ability to fire you, yes, but not smartest). Associates were stripped of benefits, disrespected, not given proper tools to do their job, not listened to, ...... how can you expect innovation and transformation from associates treated the way Eddie treated his Associates?

• Lack of respect for Customers - heck, he wouldn’t even call them “customer” he called them “members” (they weren’t Costco). Rarely even spoke about or considered the customer in his idea mill, except for maybe how to exploit them. He made erroneous assumptions that customers didn’t care how run down the stores looked, or how lousy the merchandise selection was. Customers would buy because he was Eddie freakin lampert and they’d do what he wanted them to do just like his associates did.

• lack of retail knowledge- very basic principle here - you must have merchandise people want or they won’t buy from you and you won’t make money.

• lack of identity - Sears and Kmart we’re not startups - they were 100+ year old companies that were established with their customers. Want to start something new? Then do that, but don’t think you can take something old and make it new to millions of customers, now you not only have to start up, introduce and deliver your new business model you have to also make people change the way they have always thought about you. To complete the disaster, take something your customers know and trust, water it down, cheapen it and make it unreliable and you get why customers didn’t respond well to your new “start up” concepts.

• poor execution of ideas - every new idea was under funded, not executed in a manner that created enough data or information for decision making, or not fully conceptualized before executing. When ideas did not pan out, they still continued to execute them because Eddie either really like the idea or wouldn’t admit it s isn’t work and kept pumping it (I.e. Shop your way)

Each of the failed retailers you Had differing reasons for failing. Granted Sears was not in great shape and certainly Kmart was already down for the count when Eddie acquired both of them, but Eddie did fail them and he failed to deliver on his promise. Eddie knew what he was buying, he had a “get quick rich” scheme to use Sears. Are over Kmart doors that failed miserably - sh-t got real crazy after that. Any revenue coming in found its way out and into Eddie’s pocket by means of spinning off, selling off or paid into Seritage or other entities. The other failed retailers didn’t milk the cow as hard as Eddie has, even now.

As for JCP, different but similar story. They too had a hedge fundie buy them, Ackman. He was the one that spent all their capital on remodels and hiring Ron Johnson from Apple store fame. Within 2 years he walked away (wish Eddie had done that) and the board brought back the CEO Ackman fired for the Apple ringer who had made matters worse. It was a good move because JCP experienced a short recovery. The reason they held on as long as they did (only filing BK this week, 2 years after Sears Holdings) was because their hedgie left and didn’t continue to s— them dry of every asset they had.

Sears should have been Amazon. They did not invest or have vision for the future before their lunch was ate. They had the supply chain/logistics Need to be a forerunner in technology but NEVER invested

Eddie's ideas and execution ended up being an epic fail for Sears and Kmart.

At this point, things are likely too far gone to save Transformco.

You bring up some excellent points. I think retailers like Sears and JCP began as mail order and will end up basically as a dot com, which is a modern take on mail order. I wish he'd close these stores sooner rather than later because it's pathetic to see it gasp its last breath. It's over. I loved their catalogs and ordered from them regularly back in the day. Now I go to work and wonder why he doesn't just limit it to fit com orders.

Well said OP, well said.