Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire self destruction through poor management

I see that Sears is getting ready to close another bunch of store. They used to be THE name in tools, etc. Then they discovered China & now their tools are crap. They used to have good prices but now they're priced out of the market.
They need new management, not less stores.

Sears looks to sell more assets, accelerate store closures after weak fourth quarter
Published February 09, 2016 The Wall Street Journal

Sears Holdings Corp. said Tuesday that it would sell more assets, accelerate store closures and find other ways to cut costs after revenue fell short of expectations and cash flow turned negative in the important holiday quarter.

Shares in the department-store operator fell Tuesday to their lowest levels since 2003. The stock, down 54% over the past 12 months, declined 8.8% to $15.25 in 4 p.m. trading Tuesday.

The Hoffman Estates, Ill.-based retailer run by billionaire hedge-fund manager Edward Lampert has been jettisoning assets to fund operating losses and other obligations.

Since 2012, the company has raised $9.5 billion by selling real estate and business units, including the Lands’ End clothing chain and Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores, according to Monica Aggarwal, an analyst with Fitch Ratings.

Last year alone, the company raised $3.1 billion by selling stores into joint ventures with mall owners and spinning off 266 properties into a real-estate investment trust.

As of Jan. 31, 2015, the company operated 1,725 Sears and Kmart stores. Sears used a large chunk of the money it earned from last year’s real-estate deals to reduce debt by about $1 billion.

They will be gone by year end.

Sports Authority is circling the drain as well.

Oh, Sears. Here I thought this was going to be about the fools that administrate our company!

Just another case of the farther away decision-making is removed from the people who actually generate the revenue, the worse the company does. i.e. find me a sears corporate guy who's depended on tools for a living, or directly served the guys who do, or in our case, anyone in administration in our company who knows chit about medicine.

sad about Sears. been shopping there for 5 decades.

i too, thought the OP was talking about the USA. very similar

ked

Hey, at least the man at the top is a billionaire. After all, he's doing a bangup job ruining a decades old company.


I need to get a job where I get rewarded like that for utter failure.

Sears WAS the internet sales of many a rural person for a LONG time. Shame.

Sears was bought for it's massive real estate holdings. The plan was always to cut it up. The real estate in HI was some of the first to go.

They lost the battle when they forgot who brought them to the dance.

A former coworker's previous job had been the general manager of a pretty large Sears store. He started out working part time while still in high school for Sears and over the years worked his way up.

He said it got so unbearably stressful trying to satisfy the new management whims after the Sears/Kmart merger that he had to opt for early retirement. Within a year or two after he left Sears the man who took his position left Sears too and also came to work for our company.

Not the urban mall shoppers??

Years ago I knew the manager of a Sears tire shop. When he was about 2 years from retirement, they moved him to clothing and put him on a full commission. Since the department manager didn't sell much, he was starving. He was just trying to get by until he could retire. They were trying to force him out of his pension.

Yep , by the time Sears went Chinee Walmart/Lowes/Home Depot already OWNED the cheep Chinee tool market. Sears was crazy to think they could go up against them in that market.


Mike

I don't think tool sales was/is the made or break of Sears.

No, it was trying to sell women's clothing and curtains. Remember the "softer side of Sears" campaign?

Core competency is a concept accountants just can't grasp. You can't run a business without numbers, and you can't run a business by the numbers. As long as accountants are in charge, a business will decline.

How can this happen in the Tremendous Obama Recovery?

Women's clothing was in Sears from the beginning. The original catalogs had about everything you could imagine, including clothing. A country person could easily get by if he had to buy everything he owned from Sears.
When this area was settled in the early 1900's, a lot of the houses built were Sears kits. They were quality houses and many are still standing.

I thought it was our country.


Sears and Montgomery Wards were THE two catalog stores for decades..

Sears house kit plans - 1908 throurh 1940.

http://www.searsarchives.com/homes/1908-1914.htm

Good post - way too many businesses controlled by people interested in how they can wheel and deal rather than run a business based on growth through providing the product(s) the company purports to supply.