Time was, Sears was three quarters of the home durable goods market and companies like Whirlpool launched features on Kenmore before they did on their own wares. Sears was STILL the market leader right before Eddie took the reins as CEO. Eddie systematically k–led the Kenmore brand. God knows why, that was a cash cow worth more than his personal fortune, and certainly worth more than ESL and Seritage combined. People aren't going to buy if there isn't a store nearby, and there are tons of new Best Buys, Home Depots, and Lowe's in new areas and zero new Sears since Eddie took over. Vendor trust of course plummeted because it's Eddie. If he'd sold Kenmore, Craftsman, and Diehard when he'd gotten ahold of Sears, back when they still had value, it'd be worth more than everything he owns now put together.
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Kenmore is dead as a brand, and it's typical of Eddie to think it has any residual value after personally destroying it himself. With no product range, no stores, and no distribution channels except sears.com with no product available (which will probably send you a ten year old light bulb as a similar item because an appliance isn't available), even if you wanted to buy a Kenmore appliance in 99% of America, you can't. And remember the Kenmore TVs? That was just 3 years ago. Another brilliant move.
Pebble became another metric. Everyone in our organization was REQUIREd to post 2 a month. It was then used during monthly reviews and you had to set goals of how many you would have each month. Every negative comment created immediate follow up and response to upper management. It became just another thing everyone was forced to do and created another job to do, on an organization already overwhelmed
How stupid is that? Upper management driving this shows the complete disconnect
Pebble came about because the braintrust was convinced Google Wave was the next big thing, no joke. Open collaborative communication and sharing of ideas. The name and idea was a rip-off from the get go, and Google immediately decided it was a failure and pulled the plug, but in typical Eddie fashion, even though Sears management worked against its very purpose from the get go, and argued, badly with people his socket puppet accounts because he's socially inept and doesn't understand concerns on the floor (you could see this on his joke of a blog too), it continues to this day because Eddie suffers from magical thinking and has no clue on how how to execute. He's always thought companies just magically work, never assumed any actual responsibility himself, and still doesn't to this day.
It's hilarious how they set up a platform like pebble and then get furious when people use it to voice their concerns like what'd they expect it's a perfect way to get your voice heard by literally everyone in the company when no one will listen otherwise, not that it does any good the DM just immediately calls the store and tells you to delete the post and nobody up top cares about any problems store level employees face dealing with the customers anyway
Lying. That hits the nail on the head. Eddie created a culture of CYA, lying, and distrust that flowed from the top down, because no one trusts each other. No one trusts Eddie, no one trusts each other in the C-Suite, no one trusts management, vendors don't trust buyers, and Eddie has been selling a load of bull day one because it's plain for everyone who walks into any store to see that he's never prioritized Sears and Kmart, ever. "Don't go on Pebble". There are so many media stories about how uniquely dysfunctional everything has been since Eddie took over straight from the people running the company. Even the month leading into the bankruptcy he was still trying to pin the blame on everyone but himself. He's run out of donkeys.
I've read Rand's books. Rand celebrates producers and innovators, while disdaining the parasites who produce nothing and live off the hard work and genius of those who came before and get in the way of the people actively trying to improve things by throwing a bunch of red tape and are always passing the buck. Eddie wouldn't be the protagonist in an Ayn Rand novel, he'd be the antagonist. He's exactly the incompetent villain character in Atlas Shrugged made flesh.
@cps, I wasn't saying that he isn't to blame for the mess. Whatever his plan was from the start, it wasn't this. This gives him less than what it would have early on. What we're seeing now is what he's doing to try and salvage some kind of profit for himself.
If Eddie was lied to, it was his own fault. The CEO has got to have some clue about what's going on in his company and especially at his competitors.
Plus he deliberately followed that Randian BS about survival of the fittest, pitting departments against each other for resources. Any store manager with an IQ over 85 would have told him how ridiculous that would be in the real world.
Finally, Eddie CHOSE not to invest in the physical stores. That IMO was the kiss of death.
I wonder if EL didn't think it would just float along and continue to hold its worth? Or if maybe he just figured it would be worth more with time, even though he put nothing into bettering it? Or maybe he was always trying to sell it and always had it at such a cost that nobody was interested?
Hard to say what he was thinking, but I do believe that early on, he was consistently lied to about it and the situation and his "hands off" approach allowed things to just flounder.