PILOT SPIN
Spin Zone => Spin Zone => Topic started by: invflatspin on October 15, 2018, 03:01:40 PM
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I'm old enough to remember going to Sears with my parents for EVERYTHING. My first guitar was from Sears, I bought a minibike from Sears, Clothes, shoes, tools(of course), even some jewelry for the ladies. Everything. It's a watershed event for my gen.
At one time, one could order a Ercoupe from Sears, and a house, and motorcycle, and just about anything one could need.
Strange days.
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Sears, JC Penney and Montgomery Ward.
My Dad used to work for Monkey Wards as we called it back in the day - he was a merchandiser with responsibility for toys in 1976 - we ended up with EVERY Star Wars toy ever produced, I would absolutely kill to have known they would become so collectible, we destroyed those toys and it's likely a few were proofs/limited productions.
Ahhhhh
'Gimp
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Haha! Monkey Wards was the enemy at our house. I think my dad bought a edge trimmer from them once and it didn't work right, so he never went back there again. Not long ago I went into a second hand store in another state, and looked at the door handles. I saw the unique font with the "M W" and I knew right away it used to be a Monkey Wards store. In a run down part of town, but was prolly a nice place back in the 70s.
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Here's a long one - deep personal history with Kmart - my father's only company and where his pension came from. Plus so many bonus checks that it was embarrassing for him sometimes. One year, his bonus was 150% of his salary. But he managed to deal with it ;D
My father was an incredibly successful store manager for Kmart for 35 years. He used to say that it was a simple business...you put stuff on the shelves and people buy it. Go into one of the stores today and see if that still holds true. For the past 25 years, the shelves have been half empty or filled with crap you don't want. Today, the prices are the highest of all the "discount" retailers.
When he was a few years from retirement, they closed his store and built a new super Kmart across the street. But, new store, new blood. They pulled him back into a rotation schedule to fill in places. They put him at one store where the manager had quit because he couldn't make sales bonues. Dad went into that store, fixed a few simple things and blew the bonus numbers out of the water for about 2 years - the store is one of two that are still open in Raleigh. The super Kmart lasted about 10 years and then was closed and has been empty for years now. They used the building as a staging area for power crews for the recent hurricane.
Then they sent him to Durham, in the bad part of town.
Need to pause here and inject - Dad's first Kmart store as manager was in DC, H street NE from 1967 until 1969. It's not a good part of town, but he treated everyone fairly and with dignity. When the young kids would come in to shoplift, he would see them and cut them off - they'd say "Oh man, I didn't know YOU were working today" and they'd turn and leave. If you are familiar with history then you know that area was also ground zero in 1968 when Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. Not to say they knew the riots were coming, but two of the area leaders came to him that afternoon and said "Mr Flynn, we have great respect for you. But you need to not be here right now". So he closed the store, locked it up and got a police escort out of the area. He got home early and called his regional manager and said "here's what's going on, I don't know if we'll have a store tomorrow". The next day, almost the entire section of the city in a multi block radius was burned EXCEPT for the grocery store, the pharmacy and the Kmart.
Needless to say, getting a store in the bad part of town was no big deal for him. The store was losing money and they expected to shut it down within 12 months. Before he went in for his first day, he went in and shopped the store...easy for a 30 year veteran to identify the issues, the major one of which was no stock on the shelf...simple business. First day he laid down the law - there is a uniform, white shirt with a red vest. If you do not have a red vest, we will give you one. If you do not have a white shirt, come see me. We have a whole store and somewhere out there is a white shirt for you. He identified the few trouble makers and got rid of them and the culture got better very quickly. He asked his boss about cleaning up the book - hey, the inventory levels are way off because of years of shrinkage and they're going to have to be corrected before shutting down. Got clearance to do that, but he knew better what would happen. Once the inventory correctly showed the stock level was low, the computers kicked in and automatically generated replenishments for the store, plus allocating extra work hours to the store to receive the product and stock the shelves. So the good people left at the store were happy because they got more hours to stock the shelves, the shelves were full and suddenly people started buying the stuff. In 3 months the store went from deep in the red to healthy in the black (and Dad AGAIN blew away the bonus numbers). His district manager was shocked...but it's an easy business, you put stuff on the shelf and people buy it. That store stayed open for another 10 years after Dad left it.
What I described here is what I think is the primary missing ingredient from the company. I worked there too a long time ago and I'd be willing to bet that nobody there has the same appreciation for how to be successful. It will stumble along but look for them to fail again in the next 5 years.
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The Sears Craftsman brand was sold off to Stanley Black and Decker, so it will persist.
The Kenmore and Diehard brands were up for sale but as far I know there haven't been any takers for them yet.
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Here's a long one - deep personal history with Kmart - my father's only company and where his pension came from. Plus so many bonus checks that it was embarrassing for him sometimes. One year, his bonus was 150% of his salary. But he managed to deal with it ;D
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Good story. It's amazing how effective common sense can be, not to mention how rare common sense is.
The only part that disappoints me is that he was embarrassed about the bonus checks that he EARNED.
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The Sears Craftsman brand was sold off to Stanley Black and Decker, so it will persist.
The Kenmore and Diehard brands were up for sale but as far I know there haven't been any takers for them yet.
Craftsman tools are pure junk now. I have a rolling cabinet full of older Craftsman professional tools (along with SnapOn) and they will out live me.
Recently bought a small Craftsman set for a project, and the quality is cheap Chinese crap, basically throw away tools.
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Sears Kenmore appliances are quite good, in my experience. They last, with little need for repair. If a part needs replacing, Sears is always there ... !!!
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Good story. It's amazing how effective common sense can be, not to mention how rare common sense is.
The only part that disappoints me is that he was embarrassed about the bonus checks that he EARNED.
I don't think he was really embarrassed by them, but when you get a bonus check that is bigger than the combined salary of all the bank tellers, it's a mixed feeling. I was with my mother the day she deposited that 150% check and she was embarrassed. But it paid for the place at the beach, summer camp and private school for all of us and three boats for Dad, plus early retirement. Like I said, we managed to deal with it.
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Something else that I think has been missing from the retail experience for a few years is the environment around the stores. It's a complex calculus, but it affects a lot of the impulse, or even the desire to 'go out and shop'. Our retail Sears in the 1960s and 70s was in a family middle income location. It was kept spotlessly clean, the parking lot was well paved, the trees and shrubs around the parking area, and the entry to the stores were well tended and groomed, the glass was cleaned each other night, the sidewalks were brushed with that little street sweeper and everything about the store area was a place I wanted to go and spend money.
Also, the empl were more caring about the business they were in. I recall seeing well dressed women without tats, and metal in their face at the beauty counters. The mens shop had men with mustaches, a vest and the measuring tape around their neck. The tool place was stocked and you could get help with someone who knew what a radial arm saw was used for. There weren't 20YO grunge kids standing around the side smoking and playing grab-ass.
It's hard to pin down, but the entire retail shopping experience has to welcome people to the store. I went to the Mall of America in MN a few years back, thinking I was going to HATE it. I had a daughter and wife with me, and we actually had a pretty good time. The whole thing made me want to spend some money(they bought clothes, shoes and a winter coat - we got out for ~$500, not bad), and when we left I said to them 'I had a good time, and I would go back'. and I do not like shopping.
Sears aimed itself as the nuclear family with H&W, two point three kids, and a dog named 'clyde', just like Ozzie and Harriet. Somewhere, they got off track and started branching out into places that retail should go. Of course, the online shopping hit them hard, but when someone starts stealing your retail customers, adapt! Sears should have had a major, serious, and extensive online presence 15-18 years ago! They had so many locations that custom ship-to-store(in industry it's called JIT delivery) was tailor made for keeping Sears relevant. And whatever drives people in the door is a great thing. While picking up the online order, what else would they get while in store?
Sad to see such a retail giant make so many mistakes.
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Businesses come and go. It is a bit of a surprise that the company that invented remote sales goes under due to internet sales, but then again Kodak went under after inventing the digital camera.
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Businesses come and go. It is a bit of a surprise that the company that invented remote sales goes under due to internet sales, but then again Kodak went under after inventing the digital camera.
That's cross my mind also. Sears had the catalog sales for eons, with people used to ordering, and then waiting for the goods to be delivered. They were a natural for what Amazon, and others are doing. Guess their stodgy, typical, old school corporate management wanted to take NO RISKS at all to be innovative. Well, their loss.
I was talking about Kodak to a friend earlier who just bought a high end digi camera. They really screwed the pooch too, along with Xerox. Rochester, NY must be a ghost town by now.