Sears is bringing back the paint department in select stores. One of the reasons they abandoned paint was that it is a very labor intensive department. How will they manage to run that department with their current minimal staffing?
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2016/08/30/sears-paint-craftsman-weatherbeater-easy-living/89576842/
Sounds like SHLD's main paint supplier wanted back in and approached the buyer with good pricing. They are branding all the paint with Sears owned brands. Double bonus is increasing the value of those brands.
They just found some old paint in the corner of some warehouse that they need to get rid of to raise some cash. :)
Why does lambert have to keep this going until summer 2017 re the pension deficit as one poster says? The pension deficit is somewhat secured by them taking the kcd and 125 stores as collateral....
Unbelievably stupid IMO unless there really IS a way to make it self serve. The markup on paint is probably not that great.
There are paint stores on almost every corner in my neck of the wooes, and Home Depot/Lowe's/ACE etc to boot.
Did Sears' PTB never hear of "blue ocean"? That means being in a space where no one else is. Paint is a white ocean product, with sharks swarming all around and foaming up the water. DOA
Like most of the other things this company does, this is all just a charade to conceal the hastened liquidation of Sears Holdings. It's to make as much people as possible believe that the company is "fine"...most outsiders would reason that this new product and that new service equals a company that is expanding and growing, not shrinking and dying, right?
Wrong.
Kenmore Alfie, DieHard tires, all of the new apparel brands (such as Simply Styled and Risewear)--they are all nothing more than for "show". When companies are about to go bankrupt, it is often a strategy to "continue business as usual" and institute changes that ordinarily contradict with financial difficulty up to the point where the plug is pulled. It's an attempt to assuage the concerns of the public, the media, employees and newbie/novice shareholders that would be better off avoiding the stock market.
For someone who doesn't know better, why would a failing company institute changes that indicate otherwise? This is why. Of course, those of us that know better will recognize these attempts as cover-ups.
Remember, Eddie's gotta keep this jalopy running until summer 2017 because of the pension liability--anything of value (KCD, the few "valuable" RE left in the portfolio) could be completely up for grabs until then.
If Sears Holdings were a car, it would have rust holes all around the body, flat and bald tires, a slipping transmission that would redline the engine going 35 MPH and a rusted-out gas tank that leaks out half the fuel before it pulls away from the gas pumps, but it has to be able to run long enough to get to the Pick-N-Pull up the road so it can be stripped for the few parts it has and then crushed.
Yup - the paint is at kmart
http://www.newson6.com/story/32888417/kmart-unveils-a-whole-lotta-awesome-at-des-plaines-store
chuckle of my day is thinking about this post if it is tried at a Kmart store -
code c to paint, code c to paint. ( Moment later) code c to paint, code c to paint. Repeat till we've lost customer. Phone call is - paint dept line 1, paint dept line 1, code c. (moment later) repeat and just wait till we lose that customer, too. deliciously funny!
hope they don't bring it back to kmart due to the cruel way our very long lead in that dept was canned. such a sad end and bitter feelings. now all they could do is call customer assistance over and over and no one there to show up.
I wonder if that is why some of the stores are liquidating the shoes? To install a paint area?
Self serve? They are going to offer 2,400 colors. Customers mixing their own paint? I can only imagine the fiasco that would be. Then again, Sears already is one big fiasco!
self serve
they wont run it. It is another stupid plan to get people into the store. People come into the store to buy paint and hopefully they buy something else. The problem is that they will continue to understaff and customers will suffer. They will probably spend millions coming up with some metric, program, or new SYW benefit to get customers to buy in, but in the real world, (store levele) it will not be feasible or practical to implememt. Give it a few months and it will fall away just like every other idea they come up with that does not work.