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Re: [OM] OT: Speaking of Nostalgia...

Subject: Re: [OM] OT: Speaking of Nostalgia...
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 23 Mar 2017 10:54:27 -0500
Sears was preceded in death by General Motors.

These mega-corps lose the basic fundamentals of Business 101. After a
while, they get totally destroyed by analysis-paralysis. It doesn't
take fancy spreadsheets and trend analysis to figure out what 30
seconds of walking into a store will tell you.

The typical Sears store is dingy, dark, shelves are empty and the
staff worthless. But, man-o-man, when you actually DO buy something
and are at the checkout, do you get sales pitches on twelve different
types of credit cards and other loyalty programs.

And another thing. Sears and KMart (before and after merger) were
notorious for turning their Accounts Payable department into profit
centers by failing to pay suppliers on time or for full amount.
Instead of full payment in 30 days, they would stretch it out to over
120 days and then only pay part of the bill. Essentially, nobody got
paid from them for more than 80% of the bill in under 120 days. I
mention this because such unethical behavior WILL catch up to you,
eventually. While I'm saddened for those few remaining quality
employees who will lose their livelihood and won't be able to get
hired by GOOD companies, shutting down this loser operation is well
deserved and long past due.

In the late '80s, when I was a business accounting major in college,
Sears was one of our case studies. Up to that time, they had the
golden horseshoe firmly tucked in place, but the writing was on the
wall. They had migrated from a nearly flat corporate structure to a
highly tiered structure. They transformed to literally something like
8 levels of VPs. It is also interesting that their move from out of
Chicago itself completely changed the culture of interdepartmental
communication. Somethings improved, other things got worse.

I've mentioned this before, but I think it was 1989 when we had a
downturn in the economy right before Christmas. Sears and firmly
entrenched retailers pulled ALL or NEARLY ALL advertising going into
Christmas to "preserve cash". They had the most devastating holiday
sales on record. Meanwhile, there was this upstart out of Arkansas
that bought up every stitch of available advertising at a discount and
emerged from that recession as THE retailer going forward.

Walmart.


AG
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