Thread regarding Sears layoffs

To the question does senior management know their employees and customers. The answer to that probably varies. Our senior management in our department does and there is a big push again for the corporate associates to get into the stores. I also think some stores are funded and some aren't depending on the profitability of each store. I won't get into a rationale behind that as I am not privy to that, but I have heard that. From some of these posts, it really sounds like associates aren't treated well, and that is not the case across the board. Whether or not that is right is not my judgment call, but I know that to be the case.

@nsy- it truly is like 2 separate companies. Corporate and all their programs and initiatives feels like a separate company from the stores. Corporate talks about transformation and about excellent customer service. In the stores, we have broken-down floor tiles and fixtures, peeling paint, and not enough associates to clean up and straighten up let alone provide excellent (or any) customer service.

@MYOxcfe-3lpn

I've always said the same thing. Kmart and sears would have been gone years ago without him.

What I know about business and economic is pretty limited but surely sears has gone beyond the point where it costs less money to close than to stay open? I know there's a cost to close a company completely and sometimes that cost is actually more than the cost of staying open. SHC's debt to income ratio has been in bad shape for while now...I mean the company equity is like -4 to -5 billion... This is pure speculation but I'd guess that the company has been limping along due to Eddie's and other investor's own personal gains. That being said, without that the company would have gone under long ago. Which would have been worse for employees than this...well kinda. You could use the whole "rip the bandaid off quickly" argument and probably win based on what I've been hearing/seeing. Also the fact that the early decisions weren't the correct ones to save the company from its nosedive, and probably did more harm than good.

Either way the decisions he's making at this point are probably for himself and the higher ups rather than for the little people in the company at this point.

Thank you.

So it sounds like from your reply that the Sears blog posts I read about are much more closer to reality than media reports?

I generally find the blog posts upbeat and interesting, there is almost the impression that SYW is a different company than Sears/Kmart. My prior question was more toward asking if senior management are in touch with most employees and customers...

No one in the regular "rank and file" in headquarters is delusional. We all know exactly what is going on and what challenges we face. I think there are those of us who just don't want to be down and out all the time as we are getting paid and no one is forcing us to stay. We all realize the challenges of trying to bring Sears/Kmart together as a company and trying to get everything up to date. And I would hope most HE associates are in the stores on a regular basis. I know I am, so we realize what we are working with budget wise. There are some really "cool" concepts store wise....ie the Appliance Concept store that are future thinking. And then there are our base stores which have been around since the 50's-70's that have all kinds of challenges...too much space....old fixtures etc. This is the company we work for.....it's not brand new so there are all kinds of challenges. Everyone, including I would hope most store associates, are just doing the best they can. It is what it is. If someone is that unhappy, it's time to move on if possible. I realize not everyone can. OR use the resources the company gives you. We have options. If you are facing issues in the stores, call the 1 800 number. That is why it is there.

Thanks for thoughts on Lampert theory.

When I read online from what Sears says to what I see talking to employees, it is almost like there are two different companies. (high tech shop your way and traditional store). Is it that headquarters has a certain sense of delusion or are they trying to create this high tech syw separately away from traditional employees?

The cool, hip, T-shirts are the new advertising. When people see them they flock to the KMart and their wallets magically open. We still have 15 boxes of shirts from the first T-shirt give away. Maybe we could sell them and pull the company out.

Lampert certainly had help in getting the company to this point. There's a long string of mistakes and missed opportunities going back to the 1970's at least. However, they did have a working profitable concept in Sears Grand before Lampert came on board and killed the program. He also made the decision to waste 7 billion dollars on share buybacks that the company could have used to "transform". He didn't build the coffin alone, but he's putting in the final nails.

Perhaps he really is trying to transform Sears and many of the stores would have closed with or without him taking over. It is awful we are closing stores and jobs are being lost, but this would have happened without him too.

I just don't see him coming out on top after all this. Between direct losses from sears/ loans to sears, as well as the indirect loss due to his hedge fund value going down I would think he'd be in the negatives. Not to mention the enormous waste of time.

I think he's just trying to get back as much of it as he can though.

@rna- here's my theory: when Eddie first started out with Kmart and then Sears, I think he truly believed he'd be able to make a legendary turn-around of both retailers. His inflated sense of ego had him believing he had better ideas and was smarter than anyone else ever involved in the retail industry. I think that's also partly why the death of SHC is being so painfully dragged out: he's still holding onto the idea that he can fix it all. However, he's also quite clearly protecting himself along the way (ESL, Seritage, etc). I don't believe that Eddie has EVER wanted SHC to go under. He's still unwilling to admit the inevitability of it's demise. Unfortunately, the changes he has implemented and the plans that he has are failing.

On the Lampert comment, does anyone understand how a guy can spend nearly 15 years at a company, staking his reputation (the next warren buffett) and preside over a company in decay for so long? There are all these articles saying he will make money if Sears goes under, one would presume he would make more if Sears didn't though? It just baffles me..

The original post doesn't mention names, but a lot of the problem is the thinking of the current CEO, Eddie Lampert He has tried to do everything on the cheap. SYWR was a inexpensive alternative to investing in stores. He wanted the reward, without any real risk. He had a grand vision of a low expense, low asset, high profit retail operation. He refused to invest anything in the stores, and he wasn't willing to invest in the technical infrastructure to pull off the transition to a more online oriented business. So they have failed at everything. The stores are falling apart, and it appears the online business is failing as well. He doesn't seem to understand a basic concept of business, spending money to make money. It will be an amazing case study in business failure after the whole thing collapses, which will most likely happen in next year or two.

I totally agree with the shop your way post and the post below about online prices. Whether they're trying to undercut the stores so more people shift to buying online or not is debatable but it also would surprise me if it was just miscommunication some of the time. Of course, there were a few online only sales that I had to price match even though I'm not even sure if were were allowed to...but I wasn't gonna put time and effort into a sale just to get no pay for it. But other than those I didn't really have a problem with online pricing personally.

@MYOxcfe-1pgl

This makes a ton of sense. Maybe it was just a high risk high reward strategy. If it worked the reward would have been massive. Unfortunately it seems sears just put too many eggs in one basket. I think the program was a good idea but the decision to focus on it almost entirely was the problem.

The ideas to improve the company were too far ahead of their time to work...and the company itself was too far behind the times to work. It was just too ambitious of a plan to be reasonable.

That being said...Mad props to whoever managed to program an application that could run on both iPads/iPhones AND be compatible with the 10,000 year old registers and the infrastructure as a whole. That sorta blew my mind as an engineering/CS student. Even if it ran like crap due to the bottleneck....I was just surprised it even worked without having to rebuild the infrastructure. I can't even imagine how expensive that would have been to do for a company as large as sears though.

If our prices in the store were the same as the advertising prices on Sears.com, it would bring many more customes into the stores,and it would stop having to match dot com or completly lose the sale to dot com.

But it seems everything is usually less on line than what we have it priced in the stores.

The OP makes a lot of good observations. Advertising is a big piece of the puzzle. You could think of it in terms of the grand delusions driving this company. SYWR was supposed to make broadcast advertising obsolete. They wouldn't advertise, they would communicate with "members" through cheap electronic messages (traditional advertising is extremely expensive. Electronic messages are cheap). So they really haven't paid much attention to advertising. Advertising expense has been cut to the bone in recent years

But the reality is, most of the retail business is still pretty much "traditional". As of the end of 2016, 92% of total retail sales still went through brick and mortar stores. So smart retailers like Walmart still cater to the old school, while also developing new channels. Sears is trying to develop a 22nd century fantasy model of retail, while ignoring the current situation.

They have made themselves invisible to most of the population. They aren't up to date enough to attract the young people. And they have alienated the oldsters with the focus on electronic communication.

I'm a relative old timer at age 50+. It's great to see young people thinking this stuff through...

Agree with the OP that advertising could have been handled differently in the past. Also agree that unfortunately the stores aren't ready for higher volumes right now.

@MYOxcfe-1btd but those places don't need to advertise because everyone already goes there anyway. They did advertise a lot though years ago before they managed to grab as many shoppers as they have now. you'd see that Walmart smiley face every 5 seconds when they first started expanding and taking over.

Like I said before. There's no solution now but there were solutions in the past. And one of those solutions was to focus less on dumb gimmicks and more on targeting the correct crowd of people.

@MYOxcfe-1yjp

Sorry buddy. I'll make sure I have an outline and a rough draft of my next anonymous forum post sent to your home office where you play English teacher. I'm sorry your appliance associate position at sears didn't work out for you.

Wow!!! What a rambling, illiterate post! If this post is representative of the current employee base, then no wonder Sears is in trouble.

I don't think it has to do with anything with advertising I will tell you why. Lets put Costco and hell Walmart they don't really advertise yet they are packed stores. They rarely advertise of what I seen on contrary I seen Sears advertise more than those 2 stores (as you know shop your way) they do it digitally and commercials on T.V. have poped up here and their and on Youtube.

The biggest lack with Sears going out of business is the work force. The solution for this past 2 weeks is what? Cut the damn hours. If Sears focused on their golden egg workers gave them actual pay increases people would be more motivated. I think I am one of the best workers at Sears if I wanted to however, if I am getting paid minimum wage I will stay doing minimum wage work. This is their fault people with experience leave get new kids that don't know nothing lacks work all because they won't offer even a small increase.

So no I don't think advertising is a problem is having customer service course another thing is course product quality has changed and is weak.

They have cut advertising dramatically due to cost.

That's the thing. Another huge improvement would be to decrease all the clutter during the checkout experience as well. Trying to buy something at sears is like trying to navigate one of those annoying sites where you need to click out of 5-6 ads before you can even think about doing what you went there to do.

As far as customer service goes I'd sorta agree, but if you look you'll probably find massive amounts of complaints about other companies as well, yet they haven't had such a catastrophic failure as sears has. Delivery? Oh absolutely an issue. But as far as in store customer service goes, id say it's pretty similar if not better than other stores in the same category. Almost so good it's annoying. Because most people are at least part commission, you'll have those who hover over you when you're looking for stuff. Sears associate are eager to get the sale, especially if it's on something nice. The only problem is that even there, you have to add more and more clutter to everything. PAs, SYW points, water filters, oil filters, etc etc etc. if you walk into a typical lowes you won't find that same type of...enthusiasm?... not to say every experience happens this way, but if I had to bet money on who knew more about the product they were talking about when comparing sears to somewhere like lowes, is put my money on the sears associate to be honest.

The return policy is also pretty standard and comparable to other places. 30 days on most items 60 days on other items that are defective with your receipt and packaging. What stores have a better or different return policy than that?...it's actually a shame that the SYW didn't record the sales check and return codes in a more accessible method. Returns could potentially have been easier and less painful than other places. Instead, it just sends an email that can be deleted or not able to be accessed at the time.

I don't think there's anything worse than being forgotten and the only time people heard your name was because it was talk about bankruptcy.

I think advertising and the large amount of clutter being thrown at shoppers is what's really ruined sears.

Just keep it simple. Advertise the items, have the item available, sell it, move on. Fast and time efficiently. I feel like most the people I worked with who were actually sales people were more than capable of selling in that manor. With better advertising at the right targets we could have focused more on the products and moving through sells quickly than stalling just so we could introduce the PA and the sears card and how cool shop your way is and how amazing it would be if you could have your filters shipped directly to your house and how you really need these super expensive shiny cables for your TV even though the signal that goes through them doesn't change and how you need to get an extra filter for vacuum and oil for your chainsaw and lawnmower now so you won't have to come back later and this and that and that...it's just such a painful experience.

I'd bet the biggest reason this happens is because sears has to get every cent it possible can from its five customers because it can't depend on volume.

Advertising can only make you aware, it can't make you do anything. The internet has democratized information, so what does Sears have that you can't get elsewhere for less money, better customer service, better return policies, and without being stalked to join a credit card or points program? They have no compelling business proposition, they are managed by children.

It was stated in another thread, but if by some miracle Sears/Kmart found a medium of advertising that actually drew in large amounts of customers, it would only accelerate their downfall, absent other corrective measures. People would come into the stores and see how shoddily they are maintained and stocked, and would end up waiting in insufferable lines with all the nagging cashiers have to do for SYWR, Sears card apps, PAs, etc. If they didn't just abandon their cart and leave without their merchandise, they would still be unlikely to return or recommend the experience to anyone else.