Great sales. Rotten margins? If so, nuff said.
Don't trust the reporting -- not because it's necessarily falsified, but because it's an estimate based on surveys. Sort of like exit polling on election day. Employment, unemployment, and GDP are all calculated the same way.
Increasing sales is not the same as increasing revenues. Sears announced they are closing these stores, and the company is making money, which is far better than K-Mart and Sears was doing not all that long ago, but they problem is they are making far less money, in fact overall sales I believe were down over 5%.
I like Sears, and to a lesser extent K-Mart, however k-Mart is getting crushed by price by WalMart, and isn’t an upscale experience enough in product or service to compete with Target. Of Wal-Mart or K-Mart I still prefer K-Mart as I don’t feel like cattle being led to a slaughter and can don’t have to wait in line 20 people deep to check out when I go to K-Mart... good for the consumer, but not a good position for the retailer.
Sears has always been higher priced than your wal-mart/k-mart, you don’t go there if you want the best price on something.. However they are a solid store, and I don’t even bother looking anywhere else when I need an appliance for my home.. It’s either Sears or a dedicated appliance store.
K-Mart has been it seems on a slow death spiral for years, they really need to improve their service.. What they do have going for them are established locations in urban environments that Walmart will never be able to penetrate.. They won’t get retail space in the heart of places where K-Marts have been for 40 years, because there is no retail space left in those places.
Kmart’s are a crap shoot from a customer perspective. They can be clean and well run, to complete messes, and you never know which you are going to get until you walk in the door. Wal Mart is mediocre, but its consistently mediocre. Target is almost always a pleasant experience, wide isles, clean stores, enough checkers working etc.
It will be interesting to see what happens, propping up failing stores is a tough thing to do in this economy, perform or die. This will stink for some folks who love their store, but it just isn’t pulling weight, especially if its in a more rural environment.
Honestly, I miss the Sears Catalog... back when it came in the mail free, you got to basically wish list for weeks afterwards....
I think the numbers are all rigged.
People are blowing out the last of their credit cards because they know they are going to be cut off.
Remember the real estate tracking regarding home sales just confessed all the numbers regarding sales were fabricated.
Obama is riding high on this blib of a tax cut. He and his democrats are too stupid to realize people will know the tax cut is fake as there losing their jobs.
150 stores closing 150 store’s worth of jobs gone. 150 stores with no delivers, no need for goods, no need for sales people to meet with buyers, 150 stores that corporate will buy less products for, 150 stores that will not anchor other stores, other restaurants, AND SOMEHOW msnbc, FNC, CNN and even MSNBC (with their DNC overseers) will report all is well.