Posted on 02/01/2020 2:28:17 AM PST by Cronos
..Over seven years, Payless went through a wringer of private equity and hedge fund stewardship that left it with inadequate technology, run-down stores and no financial cushion to survive an era of upheaval in retail. .. Financial managers exert greater control over nearly all American companies than they once did.
Their willingness to cause some pain — to close factories, lay people off, renegotiate arrangements with longtime suppliers — is, many economists argue, a feature, not a bug .. The American economy has become markedly less dynamic. Fewer businesses are being started, and the newcomers are having less success unseating incumbents. Workers are less likely to change jobs, which suggests labor is not moving toward the most productive forms of work. Many major industries are becoming more concentrated among a few giants. ..Payless is now a carcass of a company, with no stores in the United States and a relative handful of employees in a headquarters that once held 800.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I think they do, if they don’t think it can survive anyway.
That wasn’t exactly the main cause of Payless failing...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJ35lCrOYC0
They ate a giant debt pill long before they were bought by private equity firms. Yes, the PE guys raided it, but their extractions were still less than the debt they assumed with the Stride Rite acquisition. They also had lost most of their customers by the 2010s.
I learned all I needed to know about Payless after I bought a pair of shoes there and had to walk from the NYC Port Authority to 129 west 27th(it’s not all that far). My Achilles area/heels were bloody. I took a copy of The Village Voice and stuffed a bunch sheets in my shoes and limped back when I was done.
Shoes. One thing you can’t buy on the internet.
Reading the article it's clear that sometimes they do but often they don't. It's pretty clear that the fund that bought Payless bought it just to loot as much as they could and then dispose of it. They didn't invest in the company, installed management that had little understanding of the industry, and cut costs in areas they shouldn't have.
I bought two pairs from eBay. (More like “vinylized slippers”)
Parts fell off, but they were lightweight and very comfortable. At $5, I’d buy them again.
Ummmm... hate to tell you, but once you figure out your sizes in various manufacturers’ schemes, you can indeed order shoes over the internet. I’ve been doing that for more than a decade and had few problems.
Also, return policies are a thing. Yes, you can buy shoes on the internet just fine.
Living through this PE nightmare now. 3years ago they came with a mission 2021 statement to become the next best thing. In this time it is apparent that the mission is to strangle and choke off the business by not investing in it, not replacing workers that have left all the while saying the workers are not working smart enough. They have no clue on how to run the business and have no desire on hearing from those in the trenches on what works and what doesn’t. 35 year business in the financial services sector about to be vanished in 4 years. I’m looking at you Vista Equity Partners.
About 25 years ago payless drastically reduced the selection of shoes for men and boy’s.
Our family had shopped there almost exclusively since my wife and I got married, but we weren’t going to continue since we would now often need to find another store to get shoes for my son and I.
Women buy more shoes, it’s true.
They decided to cater to that market to the point that they might as well have discontinued shoes for men and boys altogether.
Nd their clerks became insulting in the manner in which they would try to convince men to buy one of two or four similar shoes which were often all they had in one’s size.
Screw them.
Wrong.
The good online shoe companies have great painless return policies if the shoes do not fit you well.
It tends to be the older shoppers who have trouble with doing things differently.
Yup. They lost their service edge. We quit them over the same issue. I used to haul four females and myself to Payless to buy shoes. When they cut their selection for males we stopped going there on a family outing basis. Saved me a ton of money!
Where are those closed factories? The USA? Hell No. So who cares?
1. Lunch or dinner. (Uber Eats) 2. Fresh groceries and produce. (Instacart) 3. Auto parts. (Amazon Prime Now) 4. And now shoes. (Amazon and soooo many others)
All of these are wrong.
I have been buying Italian motorcycle riding boots over the internet for years and they fit perfectly.
There is very little you can't satisfactorily buy over the internet. Boots, shoes and other footwear are not among that limited number.
Re: Do hedge funds kill businesses?
“Private equity” is a completely different concept than hedge funds.
Hedge funds often “short” the stock of companies that are in trouble.
Private equity actually purchases companies (which are often in financial trouble).
Bottom Line - private equity would have no investors if they killed more companies than they save.
Hedge funds may cull sick and weak businesses, but they also seek out and fund start-ups and new business methods and technologies. A close reading of the article suggests that Payless was too deeply impaired to survive missteps by business executives brought in by the new hedge fund owners.
Why pay rent for a business when I already know what I need?
Caveat: I've returned 2 (one was a mistake on the seller's part and the other was from a seller I do plenty of business from - and bought something else from them a month later - which cost more.
Because you don't have to pay for shipping?
Retail is ghetto, Who cares?
I work in designing the truck bodies for Final Mile delivery and grocery is the next big thing and it is coming fast!
Only 1% of groceries are purchased online. Groceries are over $1 trillion market in the US. Just increasing online to 5% is massive dollars and many companies are lining up to capture their share.
I love capitalism!
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