Originally Posted By: Kestas
What is happening with Sears is a reflection of our society. A professor explained it to me. When we had a strong middle class, stores that catered to the middle class, such as Sears, JC Penny, and Montgomery Ward, thrived. Now these stores are in the dumps, and the stores that are thriving are the high end and low end stores (e.g., Target, Macys).
Your professor was incredibly wrong.
Sears was doing reasonably well until Eddie Lampert and Kmart took them over in 2004 and formed Sears Holding. Lampert had zero retail experience, and the new company was simply to big, the two companies were too different, and to unwieldy to successfully merge into one.
Then Lampert divided the company into about 30 individual business units, each competing with each other, each with it's own layers of management, and each with it's own profit and loss issues. The company literally went to war with itself. The company turned into a noxious business and employment atmosphere; rather than work toward overall success, employees quit, were fired, and had no incentive or vested interest in the success of the organization. Customer service became substandard in virtually all of the business units, and the management team did nothing to counter the substandard performance.
Then to top it off Lampert went on a stock buy back spree between 2005 and 2011, buying back over $6 billion worth of stock. During that time the investments in store upgrades were minimal, and Sears became a dingy, tattered remnant of its former self. During that time customer habits changed, and Sears/Kmart never kept up with the changes. Combine everything together, and you have a business model that simply doesn't work, and management that continues to make all the wrong decisions.
Sears downfall had nothing to do with some oddly skewed revelation by an incompetent professor.
Originally Posted By: Rand
Disclaimer: this post does not mean POP_RIVET's grammar and spelling standards... and was typed on my cell phone.
Interesting. Imagine how bad it would be if you didn't have the cell phone helping you. Have you considered some remedial education? I understand there are some very good adult continuing education classes available in many public school systems.
