Capital Expenditures per sq ft (2017)
Sears: $0.91
JC Penney: $4.13
Kohl's: $8.12
Best Buy: $15.36
Capital Expenditures as a percentage of revenue (2017)
Kohl's: 3.5%
JCP: 3.2%
Best Buy: 1.6%
Sears: 0.5%
Some companies invest back in their stores and employees. At the very least they keep enough associates on the floor so "members" won't leave and never come back after waiting half an hour because lines are 5 deep because the lone person at checkout is busy handling both returns and signing every other person up for SYWR. Other companies give it all to their hedge funds, real estate investment trusts, execs, and in the end, themselves. They don't keep inventory for over 6 months.
Their CEOs don't say id--tic things like "we have all the customers we could possibly want." They don't reward their execs with million dollar bonuses for bankruptcy while at the same time hundreds of stores, ending pensions and severances, and firing tens of thousands of workers. Way to create a thoroughly toxic culture.