The office has been functional for over ten years and probably had about 250 employees at one time. We were bursting at the seams; they couldn't find places to squeeze in the new hires.
Now the office is a ghost town, oddly quiet...
The design office will move to San Francisco which, of course, is the fashion capital of world. Wait, what?
Who designs the new Simply Styled line? Its selling well because its dirt cheap, but the store makes almost nothing on it. Our clothes are so boring, and the women's stuff is tacky.
Kmart merchants are designing for a customer that only exists in their dream world. Shoplifters aren't as discriminating. So the budget dropped LP and picked up Merchandisers? We are merchandising to shoplifters? Yep, color group it - that will fix everything and price point, too. TRY to get the ad signs right, then sales will go up, right? Soon even the discriminating shoplifter will not be able to pedal Kmart stuff.
Yes, this is the EXACT same clothing that women pass over and go to Goodwill to shop. We got a good chuckle at that one. We did get it! LOL.
The Designers here are actually led by the Merchandisers and upper management. In the past couple of years, the poor Designers will put together a whole line of nice looking clothes and the "Big Wigs" will look the line over, trash it and tell them to start over and yes, they do go right back to the SAME OLD THING. I totally agree. There is no room for creativity here. We are always working on the SAME OLD THING season after season. They want to stay safe with the things that sold the last season. Why take a risk that something won't sell? Yawn. I get a discount and I don't want to shop at Sears and Kmart for the SAME OLD THING.
I get it.
Oh slap; they got it, all right!
To the person who works in the NYDO....Would this clothing be the same clothing that does not sell, and that women preferred Goodwill clothing over? Get it now?
To be completely honest, the clothes mostly suck. There is a reason so much of it goes to green ticket. The dresses are ugly, juniors outfits are not school appropriate, and the poor men have a rotating wheel of the same exact things already in their closets. We basically have to explain that yes, those same shorts in that same color were on clearance last month, but this is the NEW batch so it's $40.
The things that seem well-designed are actually not Sears-made at all. Manufacturers in China just sell the same lines to different brands. I own 4 pairs of shorts from Walmart, bought them last year, and now after Walmart has stopped selling them the SAME shorts are being sold by both Simply Styled and Canyon River Blues for different prices. How do you explain that to a customer? Same shorts. Only difference is the label sewn to the inside.
I mean no disrespect to the designers of New York, but I don't think the ones specifically hired by Sears were doing all that great of a job.
Some people are being invited to relocate but many invitees are declining. SF is a nice place but not a hot bed of talent for what we do here. Also, I have heard it's very expensive to live there. It's sad but what can you do?
Had no idea Sears had a design office for clothing in New York City,but just saw the article on line about the closing of it and moving to the west coast. Will many people who now work there be moving to California to continue working for Sears?
The NYDO is where all the apparel is designed and fit, working with all the factories to produce the clothing o.j. every single Kmart and Sears stores. The clothes in Kmart and Sears just don't appear out of thin air. There are teams of people working on design, sourcing fabric, trim, graphics, packaging, etc.
We work for Sears and Kmart, are a part of Sears Holdings and Eddie Lampert is my boss, too. Get it now?
What the hell is a New York Design Office????? What does it have to do with Sears Holdings?