Sears? Heads Up

The Wall Street report today at noon, said that both K-Mart and Sears are in financial distress. there was more to the report and none of it was good for their continuing in business much longer.

Sears was dead to me when KMart bought them.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Excerpt cut n Paste

To help raise cash for that future, Sears announced on Tuesday that it was looking to split off its Lands’ End and Sears Auto Center brands, two of the company’s best-known assets. It also said that Sears Canada, which it controls, had sold five store leases for $384 million.

There's an idea. Sell off the only things they are making any money from. That worked great when then spun off their furniture into a separate store, called it "Sears Home Life", then sold it off only to die shortly after.

Lands End will survive as they not only sell quality products, it's still being ran as a unit of its own headquartered in Dodgeville, WI. The Auto Center will die an undignified death or get bought up because of all the competition.

The Texan wrote:
Sears will be gone over the next 2-3 years and the Craftsman trademark, now owned by K-Mart, will become the main brand for K-Mart ... Just do a search of Sears stores closed over the last 2-3 years and you will see the pattern emerging.

Actually I think K-Mart is going down with them. Do a search on both and their shoddy looking stores. Who would want to shop at either one. We haven't set foot in either one for at least 5 years. Probably closer to 10 in the case of Sears. There is a K-Mart not far from where I live. There is never more than 20 cars in the parking lot.

mlts22 wrote:
Oddly enough, a lot of the closed Sears locations are going to be made and sold as data centers. They have a lot of space, beefy HVAC systems, lots of power, and usually in fairly inexpensive locations, so they are good places to locate servers.

Where in tarnations did you hear that? Have you ever worked in or helped design a modern high end data center? The A/C in a retail store isn't close to being appropriate for a data center. It's only enough to to keep shoppers cool, not rows and rows of server racks. The only thing they have going for them is the amount of space.

down home wrote:
Sears and roebuck was a grand American Institution. their catalog was a fixture in the home. Then Wall Street raided it. I've spoken with some Directors in the last 20 years. The Board and CEO etc are just interested in riding the horse. The horse is tired and about to be put down. They will make millions selling off the remains and move on to invest in raiding whatever few companies around.
They put all the sales staff on commission, what few there are, eliminated many lines that were the reason we went there such as sporting goods. You could even buy a boat there in decades past and an infinite number of pieces, of farm equipment etc, which make billions for others. The raped their trademark brand of Craftsman by substituting junk and voiding their lifetime warranty and then selling the trademark for a quick profit to the off shore accounts. Tey merged with/aquired KMart and have been deliberately running it into the ground as what can only be construed as tax write offs or something.
There is no reason for any of this except Wall Street. Any Individual or group running these corporations into the ground like this would be charged with crimes. They aquired Sears sold off assets, trademarks and lines that did not have the lowest cost and highest markups, mistreated the staff, saw revenues shrink but they got their percentage.
They have nothing I want to buy there anymore. So I don't go and don't spend money there.
Wife went to buy some clothes. The part time Clerk didn't know and told her to ask the Lady at the Register, she had been there the longest. She said she couldn't leave the register.
Top to bottom Sears and Kmart have been mismanged deliberately. They will sell of the final scraps and buy a new yachts. An American Institution goes into the history books and America is worse off because of it.

Well said, and sadly....True.

Ironically we also stopped shopping there over an issue of "no service"in the clothes department. The sale they lost that day was over $500.00. The lost sales since then I can't begin to measure.

Sears and roebuck was a grand American Institution. their catalog was a fixture in the home. Then Wall Street raided it. I've spoken with some Directors in the last 20 years. The Board and CEO etc are just interested in riding the horse. The horse is tired and about to be put down. They will make millions selling off the remains and move on to invest in raiding whatever few companies around.
They put all the sales staff on commission, what few there are, eliminated many lines that were the reason we went there such as sporting goods. You could even buy a boat there in decades past and an infinite number of pieces, of farm equipment etc, which make billions for others. The raped their trademark brand of Craftsman by substituting junk and voiding their lifetime warranty and then selling the trademark for a quick profit to the off shore accounts. Tey merged with/aquired KMart and have been deliberately running it into the ground as what can only be construed as tax write offs or something.
There is no reason for any of this except Wall Street. Any Individual or group running these corporations into the ground like this would be charged with crimes. They aquired Sears sold off assets, trademarks and lines that did not have the lowest cost and highest markups, mistreated the staff, saw revenues shrink but they got their percentage.
They have nothing I want to buy there anymore. So I don't go and don't spend money there.
Wife went to buy some clothes. The part time Clerk didn't know and told her to ask the Lady at the Register, she had been there the longest. She said she couldn't leave the register.
Top to bottom Sears and Kmart have been mismanged deliberately. They will sell of the final scraps and buy a new yachts. An American Institution goes into the history books and America is worse off because of it.

j-d wrote:
I had friends who worked for Sears, and Sears was almost like a utility or county government. Trusted, respected...

That is key to why so many of us are upset at the demise of Sears.

Trusted...Respected... And in a way, more American than the big box stores.

Our first "major" Sears purchase was a Kenmore Vacuum Cleaner. Financed it even though we had the cash. Added a Floor Polisher, financed that. Those two were the last items we financed at Sears. But we paid on time. The Sears reference led to a car loan. Then a home mortgage, never had problems obtaining credit. Although all we do is pay it off in full on statement date now.
I had friends who worked for Sears, and Sears was almost like a utility or county government. Trusted, respected...

Oddly enough, a lot of the closed Sears locations are going to be made and sold as data centers. They have a lot of space, beefy HVAC systems, lots of power, and usually in fairly inexpensive locations, so they are good places to locate servers.

Strangely enough, Sears has opened two new stores (an outlet store, and an appliance store) near me. So, I'm hoping it is just a shift in business models.

What about Mr. Alvah Curtis Roebuck?

nevadanick wrote:
I used to buy alot from Sears, then one day i bought a new fridge, 2 sets of washer and dryers and the commission only sales person lied to me about when they would be delivered. Ok i can get over that but then one set of washer/dryer shows up with only one pedestal and its the wrong color. So i go to Sears and ask when this will be taken care of and the sales person is going to order the same wrong color, wont tell me when it will be taken care of so i talk to manager. No help there either. I call corporate, they say they will make it happen and the guy i am talking to asks for my number in case we get disconnected of which a few minutes later happens, does he call me back ? No. I go to Sears and tell them to come load everything up and get it out of there and havent been back.

I surprised my wife last year at Christmas with a new state of the art oven, I was told it would be delivered Christmas eve between 10AM and 4PM.... got a call at 2pm from the driver - he was 20 minutes away... wife was out getting last minute stuff for dinner.. worked great!!