Although there are varying opinions about the wisdom of Eddie Lambert, he owns the bulk of this company and he has the most to gain or lose from the business success. He never understood the retail business. Both Kmart and Sears were the top retailers in the nation at one point in recent history. Wal-mart is still the #1 retailer in the world even with Amazon's inroads....and Kmart was a clone of Wal-mart 20 years ago. What needed to happen was re-investment in the stores, improving the shopping experience and being competitive, along with playing in the online space. That could have led to a powerful retail empire, Eddie could have amassed other retailers into the fold and WOW! His strong suit seems to be making deals, he should have stuck to that and turned the running of the business over to great professionals (Warren Buffet's style)
The exact opposite happened. Eddie could have raised capital and improved the competitiveness of his business. He chose not to and even commented to shareholders that retail same store sales are on over valued metric. (kind of like the we have plenty of customers comment recently right?) That was Billions upon billions of dollars ago, both in lost sales and profit losses. The MOST important thing any retailer has is their reputation, their brand. Just the poor business news alone has ruined the reputation of these brands. Sorry to see it play out this way, after 30+ years with this company I am out working for a retailer that does "get it" Eddie never did and never will.