Making A List …
And checking it twice is what Sears Holding Company is currently doing, having announced that poor Christmas sales signal the closing of about 100 stores. They own both KMart and Sears stores, so localities around the nation are waiting to find out if they are going to see another jump in unemployment and more vacant commercial real estate.
All of the reporting about ‘Black Friday’ indicated that sales were up signaling a good Christmas season. Apparently it never occurred to the ‘analysts’ that those sales might have constituted the entire season.
There was a brief increase in traffic at the beginning of the month, but that was it. There was no frenzy, no rush of people ready to buy more ‘stuff’.
The problem with the economy is consumer demand, and it isn’t going to increase until people have jobs and the money to buy things.
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The situation is as bad if not worse in the UK. Several more prominent high street brands are on the verge of disappearing which will only be a disaster.
On the one hand, it’s sad to see old brands disappear. Anybody remember Woolworth’s? On the other hand, sometimes companies just jump the shark or lose sight of their strengths. With Sears, their strengths were appliances and tools. If they’d downsized their stores to just appliances and tools they would have been spectacularly profitable. By trying to be everything for everybody, on the other hand… well. That’s worked out well for them, hasn’t it? 😈
As for K-Mart… just decades of mismanagement. Bad inventory control, bad purchasing, bad store maintenance, bad everything. The amazing part was that they managed to sucker Sears into merging with them. It’d be as if American Motors Corporation had suckered Chrysler into merging with them in 1988 and put AMC in charge of Chrysler, rather than the other way around… a “huh? Wha?!” moment.
— Badtux the Business Penguin
I remember Woolworths. They had a big High Street presence here until 2008. Same for Virgin music stores. All gone now.
“Anybody remember Woolworth’s?”
Ooohhh, yes. There was a Woolworth’s on a major intersection in downtown Houston when I was a child. Mostly my family bought shoes there; they had about the least expensive decent quality shoes for a few years back then. I don’t know what occupies that real estate now, but it must be more profitable than retail, because whatever it is, is in the very heart of downtown. Best guess: a headquarters for a major “awl bidness.”
Woolworths in the US became Foot Locker, a trend that started with their Kinney Shoe brand that Steve remembers. My Mother worked at Woolworths in several places just after getting married.
The various ‘Dollar’ stores are supposed to be the replacement for the ‘five and dimes’, another creation of Woolworths, but it isn’t the same, because they don’t consistently carry the same products. ‘Notions’ were what you always bought at Woolworths – the little stuff that no one else seemed to carry.
The way retailers have been acting, they are forcing people to buy on the ‘Net. I have increased my on-line shopping because I just can’t buy things locally. Fortunately there is still an Ace Hardware in town, or I would have to wait to fix anything around here.
KMart starting following WalMart’s lead, and that was a major mistake. They just couldn’t leave well enough alone, and serve their customers. Sears tried to move upscale, and annoyed their customer base. As you say, Badtux, Craftsman tools and Kenmore appliances were their strength, and they diluted it with a lot of space wasted on things that Sears core customers didn’t want to buy.
Sears should have been the first major store on the ‘Net, but they blew it. Their catalog sales were a natural fit with on-line shopping, but they spun off the catalog sales.
Jams, don’t look for a record store in the US outside of a major city, they are all gone, have surrendered to WalMart and the ‘Net. WalMart apparently only carries the ClearChannel play list, so you are forced to go to the ‘Net.
Same deal with books, BTW. The only book stores you’ll find are either B&N (the last man standing of bookstore chains after all their competitors went under), or used book stores. Pretty much like the only record store you’ll find is a used CD/record store.
As a Jeeper and a backpacker I do support plenty of small businesses though. For example, I’m about to order some rock rails. Over the Internet. From a pair of brothers who run a machine shop in Houston and sell offroad accessories as a sideline (thus why it’ll probably be a two month wait for the rails, because their 4×4 work has to be fit in between the jobs for the oil companies that pay the bills). My tent came from a guy who lives in the Sierra Nevada who contracts out the sewing to a small company in Oregon. My backpack came from a small company in Texas that, alas, does contract out much of their sewing to China in order to make their packs affordable, but does contract some of it to that same small outfit in Oregon. All of this was purchased over the Internet. For the small business person who is ‘Net savvy, the Internet is a boon, not a bane. Just sayin’.
– Badtux the Business Penguin
The ‘Net can save the little guys, if they can deal with it. It is the ‘big box’ stores that wipe out local ‘brick and mortar’ stores, and then raise prices when they are gone.
Everyone has cut back on inventory selection, except Ace Hardware, which uses the philosophy of a few of a lot of different items, rather than a lot of the same item.
I miss the book stores and music stores, as I always enjoyed browsing.
An example of the ‘Net and a small business: Zombie Runner. Founded by a former co-worker and his Significant Other, said co-worker and SO being ultra-marathon runners (thus the name, somewhere around the 12th hour of running a 100-mile ultra-marathon things get somewhat… zombie-like… apparently). They started the business part-time selling trinkets for ultra-marathon runners from his back bedroom (not his garage, his garage was full of computer junk 😉 ). They now have a brick-and-mortar shop in downtown Palo Alto but most of the space there is still devoted to the mail order side of things (which is organized as a separate business with its own employees, loading dock and stockroom, etc. just in case the retail part of things doesn’t work out). I am especially indebted to the proprietor of this shop because him quitting to run it full-time resulted in me getting a major promotion and jump in salary ;).
Regarding music stores, YouTube serves that function for me nowadays. But I haven’t come up with a substitute for browsing books at the book store. Luckily we have plenty of Barnes & Noble stores locally… for now :(.
‘Brick and mortar’ stores are subject to things beyond the owners’ control, like rent and building upkeep, neighborhood, etc., while the ‘Net just chugs along.
It’s nice when people above you leave for good reasons. Among the many reasons I left law enforcement was that I jumped to number 3 in my department, but there was no indication that #2 was going anywhere, and the chief already indicated he intended to stay another 10 years. I was against a wall, so it was time to route around the obstacle.