Thread regarding Sears layoffs

Makes for a faster liquidation. Nothing is folded.

Not enough quads for that.

We receive several team apparel items via UPS every single day. It will fill up a Z-rack most of the time. It is selling but not nearly enough to warrant daily shipments. I'm worried what will happen when football season is over and we are stuck with a truckload of jerseys, pajamas, T-shirts, shorts, slippers and sweats that didn't sell. We went through that with NASCAR. That stuff took up six rounder racks and was on clearance for almost a year! Most of it ended up VOM.

The merchandising tesm doesn't really know the limits of what a store can sell. Look at all of the boxes of soap that came in over the last several months, or the piles of Laura Scott "grandma" clothing nobody really wants bad enough to buy. They over-order on many categories. Had a ton of Levi's come in yet our 25-foot "Levi wall" is full. We sell Levi's but not nearly as much as they think we could sell.

Sadly, I can't even scrounge up enough fixtures for the things that ARE on hangers to start with... Let alone have anywhere to hang the foldeds if I did put hangers on them. :\

I dont understand the sports appareal. We have a few of the local NFL and a few baseball items with a lot of teams that are no where near us. We are on the east coast and we have more west coast team appareal that local appareal. We also are a big hockey (NHL) area and we have nothing for the local team. Why do we have more items for a west coast team that isnt even good (San Diego (former)) than the local team?

We also have high school team appareal from teams that are an hour away and a few local team appareal. Who buys and determines what items are sent to what stores?

I don't know if this is applies to both Sears and Kmarts, but are any other stores just being inundated by licensed sports apparel? The recommended floor layout starting in spring just had maybe four or five four-ways of team apparel. Aside from the multiple circle racks of clearance that never did sell out before it got sent back, we had at least five four-ways of the local MLB team, four NFL (three of the local, and one mixed of a team from the other end of the state and the Cowboys), two and a circle rack of the NHL, and another two of the closest major NCAA school. All that is STILL full with probably at least a tall pallet's worth of stuff that has been checked in but never unboxed. I could open a mall store with all this and still not have enough space for it all.

We would love to start setting our our fall and winter clothes but we still have a full store of summer and even spring clothes left. We are not allowed to pack the summer clothes away until we are to send them back and we still have to put the fall and winter on the floor. Too many clothes, not enough workers to put them out and not enough customers to buy what is out.

We may have no choice in the matter as our district manager ended up throwing out a quarter of our tables for the scrappers for no reason, and despite having a full onslaught of winter table apparel coming in now, most of the remaining ones are jammed up with clearance summer apparel.

@2ssp - That's tempted me before. Throw all the excess crap that won't fit on racks, shelves or tables into those big wire bins and stick it in the middle of the aisles.

My district manager would have a conniption but with this one touch thing going on they don't want anything kept in the stockroom. Pretty soon throwing stuff into bins may be the only viable option as our store receives more goods than it can sell and there is no extra time to put it away since everyone is stuck at the CAC.

I actually miss the days of code s at my store when we had help. Everyone straightened and faced the store a couple of times a day so it was always looking good.

Just get a bunch of dump bins and throw the clothing in there. Save a bunch of time and money. Easier to liquidate in a few months as well. Our customers love to hunt for a bargain since we are thrift store status anyways nowdays.

Maybe skip ahead to the fall & winter clothes? Summer is over. At least here.

We are still trying to get out all of the summer clothes and now fall and winter and Christmas clothes are coming in. We will probably get to that in March.

@mge - yeah, it doesn't help that "parents" let their "wonderful" kids run all over the place. It also doesn't help that "adults" are just as bad, if not worse than the kids. I've seen grown men and women wreck the place (the elderly are respectful shoppers for the most part).

It's really bad now because there are no hours AT ALL to go behind these cretins to undo their mess. So, for days.. weeks...large swaths of softlines look like a tornado ran through it.

That's the reality we are facing, the question is will upper management snap out of their illusion and face reality? You need HOURS to run a store successfully.

@idn See what I mean I have seen the soft lines crew cute to the bone to. I remember when they use to be 2 leads and like 13 part-time associates now they are 1 Lead and 6 part-times and just recently they got a 1 full time soft line (however it was before 1 lead and 6 part-timers). Yet they are expected to do millions of things and what is sad the ASM is in denial and blames them for not keeping up on sales.

I don't know about other stores, but its just sad seeing one soft line closing at times in charge of 60 percent of the store. If they are lucky they have 2 closing, but back in the days it use to be 3 to even 4 you just see how bad its gotten. To add I don't know if its me, but the customers have become more pigs I don't know if its from the demographics we attract now, but customers just destroy departments within seconds along with their child that the parents don't even pay attention to.

If they benchmarked off competitors they'd find that's what Salvation Army and Goodwill do.

OP same here. But they don't ever take suggestions lol. The men's department is the worst. Six years ago we had an ASM, 2 leads, 4 FT, and about 10 PT in softlines. Now we have 2 leads, 2 FT, and 4 PT who have extremely limited availability. Plus they're softlines associates now, with responsibility for cashiering. And cashiering is literally all they do.

In our store, storylines freight is all backed up in the stockroom on carts and racks...sitting for a week or more with more apparel flooding in on trucks.....Nobody has hours to even touch the new apparel already on hangers.

In our store, storylines freight is all backed up in the stockroom on carts and racks...sitting for a week or more with more apparel flooding in on trucks.....Nobody has hours to even touch the new apparel already on hangers.

In my west coast area all merchandise is on hangers