PROBLEM: J C Pennys and Sears tried to rely on only great, big department stores. Both have good "name brand" items & lines. Gold Toe Socks for example. A better model would have been mini mall satellite stores selling their best sellers and seasonal items and a catalog department. Walmart has such a store in a mini mall near University of California, Irvine. I hate to lose Sears and J.C. Pennys because of over paid stupid yet profiting, CEOs. Stock holders absorb their loses. Moi Across an immense, unguarded, ethereal border, Canadians, cool and unsympathetic, regard our America with envious eyes and slowly and surely draw their plans against us.
mega corporations have changed, they used to care about employees and customers.... now it's only the shareholder, being profitable is not enough corporatism is destroying this country
What happened to Sears was another issue, it didn't have to do with their business model. How the CEO of Sears has been driving his company into the ground https://www.businessinsider.com/sea...sing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1 He is totally out of touch with reality. He has made his managers too afraid to tell him the truth; he doesn't want to hear it. He's also raided his own company's real estate assets, transferring them over to another corporate holding entity he controls, at discount prices below going market rates. If the allegations of lawsuits brought on by Sears shareholders are true, he has basically been stealing billions from the company to line his own pockets. Maybe he doesn't actually care so much about the wellbeing of the Sears company, just wants to ravage it for all it's worth. A real Wall Street shark. He can conveniently blame the death of his company on online competition from Amazon, but in this economic climate, Sears should not be struggling. Per capita retail spending is actually slightly up from what it was before the Recession, and rising rents cannot explain the problem either since Sears actually owns (or used to own) a large amount of its stores. Sears stores are going out of business right and left, all their brand name appliance names are being sold off, and no one is buying from their online site. Of course, the way he's set up everything, even if his company goes under, he still wins. This just sounds like another case of private equity using leveraged buyouts to parasitically raid publicly-traded companies, leaving big companies a hollowed out shell of their former selves and screwing the other shareholders. In the case of Sears, that appears to be an understatement. related thread: As retail store closures continue to unfold, will have big effect on the U.S. economy
A lot of people here don't have very long attention spans, so will ignore all real economic issues that actually matter.
I dunno how they used to be... in the 20 years that I've been prosperous enough to shop regularly, neither has had what I consider to be competitive products or competitive prices. But Im not really a mall shopper either...
