Sears shuns spending money on stores

from Sandra Jones at the Tribune 20 Nov 2009

Sears shuns spending money on stores but shells out to buy its own stock

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8380 Location: Central CA

Just no accounting for priorities, eh?

Those short term "earnings" are going to win every time with a greedmonger like Lampert.

Joined: 10 Jul 2008 Posts: 184

While I cannot refute the reality that SHLD has (purposely) taken a blind eye to needed repairs at its stores, I will not accept the claim that it has treated all stores equally in that regard. Since July, my Kmart store has received a new signing mechanism (computer, printer, and sign fixtures), new shopping carts (two kinds), new credit card machines, and multiple new fixtures (belt/hankerchiff/wallet fixture, posterboard fixture, a permanent battery endcap and separate battery island to name a few) to display merchandise. We are now waiting for six new register counters to arrive that will be installed in January. From my visits to other Kmart stores, they remain using the old carts and keep batteries in/near the electronics department. The only difference is that my store is, most likely, one of the top hundred in the organization. We're lucky - someone at headquarters thinks us worthy to be given new equipment. Most stores, agreed, aren't so fortunate.

Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:57 am Post subject:

hell id be happy with phones that work and rmu batts that last more then 20 min

Joined: 04 Mar 2008 Posts: 218

There was an influx of capital improvements in the mid 90s (boilers, roofs, air conditioning) to compliment a store remodel layout at the same time.
Downsizing of the maintenance organization has been happening since 1991, and I'm sure by now its wound down to next to nothing.
Its been well-hidden in back rooms and Penthouses in the stores for nearly 15 years, but now shows up on the shopworn salesfloors for all to see.

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2009 5:01 am Post subject:

Thanks LT.
As we all know this is true.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-tc-biz-sears-1119-1120-nov20,0,2339722.story

Joined: 08 Jul 2003 Posts: 6309

GF - move to online ?

I like the words 'analyst interpret' mr ed's strategy is to move on line. Yeah the same ANALysts that thought mr ed was the second coming or he was going to make a real estate killing.

The fact that analyst have to interpret tells me they don't have a clue as to what the ESL Crews real strategy is and that's because mr ed is basically winging it-using the shear luck method of BS and accounting magic. The Sears Brands will be so diminished by the time online would become the dominant portion of SHLD sales that online sales and profits would diminsh as well; just ask Circut City or Ward how well their house brands are selling now.

The thing with the stock buybacks in LT's post is that those buybacks have got to be profiting him in someway or he wouldn't be doing it.

SHLD is like a PONZI scheme especially since mr ed/the ESL crew owns half of the stock and must find new suckers to buy SHLD stock so his cohorts can sell off at a profit. A sucker buys in and creates a temporary stock price increase after which the crew sells off. And I'd bet half the non ESL owners are in some way connected to the crew making about 25% of SHLD stock holders suckers.

The cap ex and buy backs are an old but important story at this point but things aren't visibly getting better and yet the ESL crew/mr ed persist in this strategy ???

Joined: 15 Feb 2009 Posts: 383

We got brand new shiny shopping carts, but most of our cash registers are pieced together crap. I heard a 600 and some dollar sale got lost because of the electronics register dying for the fourth time. You would think that registers which are there to at least take the customer's dollar would be much more important that new shopping carts. The store is either too hot or too cold depending on the season, but hell we got new carts and that will certainly fix all the problems at this store. Sure it will and would anyone like to buy some nice ocean front property in Arizona?? I have some for sale to anyone who believes shiny, clean peg hooks and new shopping carts is going to fix all this company's woes.

Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 2175

DP

Joined: 28 Apr 2005 Posts: 2175

Joined: 06 Jul 2003 Posts: 8380 Location: Central CA

Ponzi scheme? Maybe in a way but I look at it as nothing more than outright robbery. The little weasel is simply looting the company.

It's been a long time since I doubted for a minute that this whole fricking stock buyback scheme was anything but a way for Eddie to take the four billion bucks Sears had when he sunk his fangs into it and funnel it to his hedge fund buddies while collecting his usual "management fees" off the top.

Why the hell else does he buy when the price spikes upward instead of when it's down? The spikes aren't as high as they used to be so the return is dwindling but won't this current operation just about drain Sears of all the cash it had at the time of the takeover?

Once this one is done there shouldn't be much left for him to piss away and once he's managed to disburse the last of the cash amongst his merry band of crooks and liars, look for some really drastic crap to come down the damned pike. He will no longer have any reason to try to maintain the facade of being a retailer that's it's been necessary to present to the public while he and his institutional investors looted the company.

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