I just made a visit to my old Kmart store that I was laid off from in January, The store has gone down hill so fast. It is absolutely thrashed! The store manager walked away a few months and the DM was let go. It's probably the worst I have ever seen the store and that is saying a lot. The deodorant aisle is lacking product. There are a few items here and there but most of HBA is empty. Home fashions is stocked with toilet paper instead of towels and pillows. Electronics had been reduced further down to one counter, the rest is now a "deal flash" department. This store did the inventory blow out test last month and now everything in the store is regular price or clearance, nothing is on sale and there is not ad, even for apparel. They said it's been all regular price for the last couple weeks. The only register open was service desk and the line was 10+ people deep. I feel bad for the employees left behind, it's so sad!
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Sales down over 30% YoY at our store. Comforters on at least 20% of the store counters, storage bins on another 10%.
It was so bad, I should have taken pictures. There were maybe tops two-three packages of deodorant on a 10 foot counter! It was the same with toothpaste and razor blades. The 10 people at the desk were a mix of returns, points issues, one guy attempting to do a western union (and then yelling at the overworked service desk associate because he had been waiting in line only to be told sorry it's "down" which is code for no one knows how/ has numbers for it, and finally people just trying to check out.
Sounds like there's no replenishment of items blown out during the Inventory Blow Out. If nothing is left in the DC, they could at least do a store to store transfer of product to keep this store going. That's what we did a lot of in 2002-2003.
10 people in line--sounds like one of the top stores.
Kmarts "turnaround" strategy is making toilet paper fashionable I guess? lol
The same thing at the old kmart store i was laid off at in january. However i found another job beforehand. Most of the veterans i worked with are gone. Electronics is down to one counter. Kmart cant even afford more than 4 cashiers a day.