Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Pure f—ery. You can’t have a real estate plan when you don’t t even fix essential parts of the buildings. Roofs leak, doors don’t work, everything is old old old.

A&E isn't going to save Eddie. A&E and Home Services are currently being ravaged by the virus. A&E was hanging on by a thread for a long time, but COVID is the final nail in the coffin. Pack it up and sell if off if you can. It's finally over.

Eddie has revealed his plans to some LP associates. They work security at his home and they act as his personal drivers. So naturally he confides in them from time to time. But since you don't want any LP comments I won't share. Your loss.

His secret plan is, there is no plan! He's already lost a ton of money, his dignity and his legacy forever. As Forest Gumps mother always said "stupid is, as stupid does"

His real estate scheme was damaged by the Great Recession of 08’. Then the great Pandemic of 2020.

His caustic management style was well stated in Yahoo news several times. The guy could only drum up negative news. As soon as he left the room his Lieutenants would Claus Von Staufenburg him. A guy like him can only tear down not build up.

He’s no Lee Iacocca. When he bought into Sears in 2005 it was strong. If he had vision he would’ve hit the Sears Catalog hard as an eCom Buiz. Figured out how to use/shrink the footprints of the mall stores and take advantage of the hometown locations as shipping units. And look at logistics to get product into those location and delivered by the footprints to customers homes in 2 days.

But Blah Blah Blah. We’ve heard it all before. It had to happen or be put in place by 2007. That’s when the phones started to take over. Instead the cash disappeared credit and all the other vitals of the grand name of Sears was spun off. Then the poor service started. And that my friends was what made Sears become an old tired irrelevant brand that is like the Corona virus... which it seems people want to avoid.

The good employees.. the visionaries are at google, Amazon, HD, Lowe’s, Brand Source, and Nationwide. AND they are Grinding their axes.

Because they knew.

Treat an employee/partner fairly and you win. I’m not with this once Iconic brand anymore. Two generations of Sears employ done with me and my family.

I know Blah, Blah, Blah.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It was all one bad real estate bet attached to the remains of somewhat profitable retail empire.

He wanted to be like Vornado was in the 80's but didn't understand just how much the commercial real estate market and retail had changed.

Now it's just about cutting losses as much as possible and salvaging the remainder of the bet.

There are no winners here. And that includes Eddie Lampert.

Seems like he can't or won't let it go.

Operating stores and non-operating stores, a datacenter building and couple others; all advertised on the Transformco Properties website. His plan is pretty well known.

The simplest product appeals to the greatest number of buyers. Marketing class 102

He actually posted a question similar to this strategy on pebble about 4 years ago.

It’s not about the products, the shelves, the staff or the customers. What’s left? Leases and buildings.

Look at the people he kept to run his business. They all concentrated on the online and home services. His plan is to build those businesses and sell it off. He thinks that sears.com must worth something in the billion dollars. Just like Jet.com sold to Walmart? It never going to materialize because it doesn't have anything to sell. The reward system they built into the dotcom business broke the camel's back. Instead of using that money to buy items to sell they sold points because their pyramid scheme is that points are free. The gal who is running the show said so. The strangest thing he kept all those people who destroyed the company. And those analyst called him the next Warren Buffet. What a joke.

Can't be much more cash on hand at this point? No idea how the gas and electric bills are being paid.

He F'ed up. He wanted to grab the commercial RE, split it from the retail end, make a profit on the properties, and either profit on the retail operations or spin them off at some point for extra cash. Problem was the commercial real estate market, especially for retail and ESPECIALLY for mall anchors, tanked in 2008 and never recovered before tanking again this year. Most hedge fund managers would have acknowledged they can't win them all and cut their losses after the first crash, but whether out of a sense of stubbornness, an inflated ego, or the fact that Sears and Kmart are such a high percentage of ESL's assets leaving him nothing else to make money on, he is going down with the ship.