Everyone complaining about upper management, upper management who? Most stores have half the managers they had a year ago and slaried managers are working 12+ hours a day, 6 days a week. I see them busting their butts. If the company isn’t going to help advertise its up to us associates to do it. Upper management can help lead it but everyone needs to play in order to win. Especially us commission associates, we need to get our names out there- word of mouth and loyalty goes a long way.
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Loyal customers aren't stupid and his type of pricing is a good reason why they aren't loyal anymore.
They raised the prices right before our F&F event. And then took 10% off which brought the price to about the same or more than any other day.
They did the same thing a few years ago when they started to give a veterans discount. We are a military town and the people on base were Pi**ed when they found out Sears tries to pull a fast one on them.
. . . . until SHC decided to eliminate employees discount. Since then F&F fell on deaf ears.
When the family and friends event concept first started, it was a HUGE hit. We closed the store at 6, then allowed only family and friends in to shop. It was exclusive for us, and it felt like the company cared enough to reward us with an evening devoted to us. We responded by spending money...a lot of money. There were fantastic deals, exciting bluelights, refreshments, door prizes, games, etc. It was a great event that we all looked forward to. And then it changed. We had to hand out flyers to every random customer to join us for family and friends day. The "bargains" became no better than average sale price. Refreshments were some cookies off the shelf. The specialness of the day faded. And that felt like the end of the company as we knew it. We then realized that us employees were no longer considered the company's greatest asset, but rather its greatest liability. That is never a good thing for any company that wants to become or remain successful.
F&F concept kind of died down as time passed by. No advertisement. Asking the associates to advertise for the company LMAO...
Just to speak on the liquidator side I swear to god customers are r----ded. Our sales have really gone up yet our prices are really no good. I really don't understand customer sometimes ever since we started the liquidation process its been packed overall.
@VZ1FHvi-lvd I’ll make sure to let K.F. know lol
Ours was a hit. The goal was 48K we took in 137K. We had the local H S football team and cheer team performing in the parking lot, food truck's and a bounce house. The Mayor even volunteerd to be in the dunk tank .Then my girlfriend asked me to move in with her...... Then I woke up
Did anyone even know it was F&F?
We had two pairs of shoes and jeans, but the cashiers were taking so long, the older couple in front of us put their items aside and gave up.
We gave up, too, and took our items to appliances to get checked out.
Goal was 25000. We didn't even come close. $4700 was all!
@gfx Family & Friends is always a 10% off sale. The same thing they do several times a year. Nothing to do with Black Friday prices.
Ours was a failure, what do they expect? Everyone is so sick of hearing about Sears, the BK, the non existent appliances, the horrible delivery or no delivery at all of HA, everyone asks when we are closing, our equipment is from circa. 1980 from the registers to the snc's. No amount of sign hanging or social media campaigning is going to change that. Customers have lost faith.
Businesses fail from the top down not the bottom up.
Now we sit and do action plans the rest of the week on why we failed so miserably as a store. Fun times.
SHC is totally leaving the Portland, Oregon metro area as of the most resent closing. The nearest sears or Kmart store will be 100 miles away. Just 2 years ago we had 5 sears full line stores and 6 or 7 Kmart stores!
I’m in a closing store in liquidation and didn’t know the other stores had a friends and family sale.
Is this the one where we would get the Black Friday prices?
Somehow the Walking Dead will fit in there nicely.
Sears new Ad campaign “The Sound of Silence” to be followed up by “Talk to the Hand”
Putting up stupid 10 percent signs everywhere didnt help. It was a regular day for us. They didnt spend money to get people into the stores. So it was just regular foot traffic. So much for being aggressive this holiday season. Smh
Sears has burned through their friends and fired all their families. RIP
When you lay-off thousands and thousands of people you loose friends and family that don’t shop Sears or Kmart. Additionally when you close hundreds of locations people will not drive out of their way. I stopped shopping and stopped telling people when SHC took away our employee discount. I believe the elimation of the discount put friends and family in a massive decline.
Same at Escondido, our Friends and Family was also bad. We put 10% off signs on everything, I think we went over our budget for paper, lol. But this reflects upper management and they are lazy and do like no physical work. It's all about eating and being in the office while the store sinks. Our Store Manager needs to go ASAP. She doesn't care!!!!
SHC advertising mindset consists of 2 things:
1) No spend
2) Word of mouth or post
Somehow the brain trust believes this is the road to success when the opposite is true.
@ggz Ours was a failure as well for many of the same reasons you gave. Based on what other associates in other Sears stores are telling me It appears a lot of stores have given up and are ready to accept the inevitable. They are just going through the motions.
I heard our goal was 38,000 and we raked in a whopping 10,000
Of course no advertising no announcements nothing
Lazy upper management at their best
They must not have gotten the memo that this is a do or die season
They could have put alittle effort into the event. Geeze