Posted on 01/09/2014 2:09:59 PM PST by Hojczyk
Sears, once America's golden retailer, is a company in crisis.
The company has shuttered hundreds of stores in recent years. The embattled company has been selling some its most profitable stores to raise money.
And now, shares are tumbling after Sears lowered guidance for the quarter and announced that comparable sales in the fourth quarter have slid more than 7%.
Brian Sozzi, chief equities strategist at Belus Capital Advisors, took poignant photos inside of New Jersey and New York Sears locations in October.
"To understand why Sears is in a 'sell stores mode' one must look no further than the stores themselves, where the truth is to be found," Sozzi writes.
His photos show the sad reality of what Sears is today.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Correct.
Did you ever meet a woman who didn't think she was right all the time?
I want to pay for my stuff and go. I don't want to give my phone number, or my email, or any of that crap. And I hated having to ask that of other people.
I got a smokin’ deal on tire for my truck at Sears.
Got a smokin’ deal on a huge tool box that I have been needing.
I buy things from Sears that I need. Buy my clothes from Lands’ End, which is a Sears unit and is doing very well.
I buy appliance parts from them as well.
As for the stuff shown by the Photog...shows me more about him than it does about the things that matter to normal people. Because Sears ain’t Lord & Taylor (don’t shop there too expensive) or Macy’s.
As far as maintenance is concerned that’s the local manager’s responsibility as is display creation.
Kmart looks like an outlet store of overstocked, rejected Chinese crap.
Then there was the old story that Sears created more millionaires in the 50’s through the early 70’s then any other corporation. Kind of like the DotComs of the 90’s.
It was a grand old store. Growing up outside of Portland, Oregon, our Sears store downtown did the full on “Christmas Story” displays. We couldn’t wait to go to Sears and see it all or shop with my folks for everything in the place.
Good luck to you my friend!
Took my soon to be wife’s car to Monkey Ward’s to have 4 tires changed...had a brand new Goodyear Eagle in the trunk. Went with a set of their tires instead as we couldn’t afford new Eagles (what the car came with).
While in the waiting room, a “mechanic” came in and spoke to the elderly lady who was there about all of the “problems” he had found with her car and had “conveniently” written up the estimate for “repairs”.
When he left, I told her to get out of there as fast as possible and if she was concerned, to get a 2nd opinion. I expected, and was not disappointed when the “mechanic” for my job came in and tried the same thing. Struts, brakes, cv joints, etc. were all “bad” and in need of replacement, showed me the estimate.
Told him to please just change the tires.
A few days later I was checking these things and when I went to get the jack out of the back...one of the old tires was now on the spare wheel and the brand new Eagle was gone.
...crooks.
Whirlpool bought Maytag, and has been the OEM manufacturer for Kenmore for some time. They use the same motors because they're all made by the same company!
I've had washers and dryers by all three makes, and my favorites (or my wife's favorites) were the Whirlpools. We had a gas dryer, which worked great. The Maytags (Neptune series) were the worst.
I love(d) Sears.
They had a store in our town and I did a LOT of business there. Then they closed that store as a consolidation to a mall store (closed three stores in favor of one centrally located). The mall isn’t safe for whites and I would prefer not to have to shoot anyone so I found alternatives.
Pity.
There is something almost all the pictures have in common: Lack of staff, not just in the pictures but evidenced by all the work not being done, like merchandise stocking and facility maintenance. This is what happens when you lay off so many people you don’t have enough to keep the place attractive. It becomes a downward spiral.
It’s not just Sears, and it’s not just retail sales. Companies are “improving the bottom line” all over the country by sacking workers and then expecting the left-behinds to pick up the slack. There just aren’t enough man-hours, business performance suffers and next thing you know there’s another round of layoffs because there isn’t enough money coming in the front door. Spiral.
It starts with “improving the bottom line” and finishes with the doors closing on the business forever. Sears survived the Great Depression (partially as the premier supplier of toilet paper), but will probably not survive this. The company that made the vast majority of the first cell phones was sucked into the Google black hole just last year, the rest of it spun off into separate companies.
Our local K-Mart is a zombie store.
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We don’t even HAVE Kmarts in Texas any more. They pulled out years ago. As for Sears, it was our “go to” place in the 50’s. At least once a week. Now I haven’t been in a Sears since 2008 when I bought my son and his wife a new fridge for a wedding present. And it was probably 20 years before that that I was in a Sears. It’s sad. They used to be a good store.
I bought a water heater from Sears back in the early 90s. The damn thing lasted 14 months, and then the liner separated from the shell, and the water spewed all over. Sears refused to do anything about it; warranty was for 12 months. What frickin’ good is a water heater that lasts 14 months? And has the liner separate?
I cut up my Sears card that day. The only reason I go to the local Sears hardware is they actually fill the propane tanks all the way and are cheaper than most places.
Sadly it’s K-mart that bought Sears after K-Mart restructured itself after bankruptcy. Shocked the heck out me when it happened!
Hubby’s toolset was wrenches and sockets. All made in USA. Bought just 2.5 weeks ago via sears.com
YMMV, and the stuff in the stores might be different.
FWIW, each and every little socket thingie was labeled made in USA. Hubby looked.
I'm really sorry to see such a great American company struggling the way they are. My wife and I stopped into a KMart recently and I'm amazed they're still open.
I remember when Sears shut down their catalog sales and their catalog stores. But again their business model was outdated. The competitors were rushing out catalog for every submarket or niche AND had toll free 1-800 numbers.
As I recall from a marketing case, Sears for years refused to put toll free numbers into their catalogs-the competition had been doing it for five to ten years.
The only thing that saved Sears was that they hired General William Pagonis as Executive VP of Logistics. Remember, General Pagonis was in charge of logistics during Gulf War I, in 1991.
Thanks — LOVE my Whirlpool washer (15 yrs old) and just had the transmission replaced instead of buying a new machine. LOVE my matching gas dryer too! LOL.
Did you know that ACE Hardware now carries Craftsman Tools? I don’t think they are affiliated with Sears or KMart though.
Mannequins have gone back to the “life like” model with heads and very posable, away from the “filled out hanger” model in the pictures, also the current trend is to put them in “real” circumstances with chairs and couches. It’s a pendulum that swings back and forth, but being on the opposite side does make a store (and therefore the selection) look dated, it instantly tells people that your target market is 20 years older than them.
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