Who killed Sears? {hint: Ayn Rand}

[MinM]

Monday, February 17, 2014

Ayn and Sears

Salon has a new piece on Sears CEO Eddie Lampert, former Goldman honcho and noted acolyte of Ayn Rand. The argument: Rand-ism failed because Lampert has pretty much destroyed the company.

Lampert is now known as one of the worst CEOs in America — the man who flushed Sears down the toilet with his demented management style and harebrained approach to retail. Sears stock is tanking. His hedge fun is down 40 percent, and the business press has turned from praising Lampert’s genius towatching gleefully as his ship sinks. Investors are running from “Crazy Eddie” like the plague.

That’s what happens when Ayn Rand is the basis for your business plan.

Crazy Eddie has been one of America’s most vocal advocates of discredited free-market economics, so obsessed with Ayn Rand he could rattle off memorized passages of her novels. As Mina Kimes explained in a fascinating profile in Bloomberg Businessweek, Lampert took the myth that humans perform best when acting selfishly as gospel, pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match. This, he believed, would cause them to act rationally and boost performance...

http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/2014/02/ayn-and-sears.html

http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/

[Gidney N Cloyd]

1. Pit your management team against each other. Genius.

[yurbud]

17. unfortunately that is the approach Wall Street is forcing on public education

with the same results.

They will make money breaking it, then make money "fixing" what they broke.

[yeoman6987]

27. Only the strongest survive

The problem with Sears is that they didn't innovate and try to keep with the changing purchaser. Today Kohl's, Walmart, Target, are the pros because they have the pulse on the American people. People want quick, easy and cheap merchandise. Going to the mall (which is where the flagship Sears are, is a dying concept). Sears could have survived if they would have moved from the mall into the strip malls which allows people to park, run in get their items and leave instead of trying to find a parking space, walk through the mall and finally shop and the biggest problem of course is they should have gotten out of the 1970 mode.

[BanzaiBonnie]

2. He didn't know much, did he.

Cooperation not competition will get everyone further.

[hlthe2b]

3. Sears is entertwined with my childhood and was THE store of my parents... I am crushed to see it

destroyed this way... It once won the day--not on bottom line price necessarily, but trust. They stood behind their appliances and products. Of course that was in the long ago day when things were made in the US.

I can't help but be saddened by what has happened to that once venerable store.

[Blue_Tires]

6. +1000

Sears was our longtime "family" store for many, many years, and I still remember the not-long-ago era when they built shit to last -- May not have been the most stylish, trendy, or best-looking products, but they had durability and usability until the end of the world...I know Wall Street and the business news reporters are having a field day seeing this nutcake CEO go down in flames, but seeing what our local Sears has been turned into is tragic...

[Jackpine Radical]

8. The Sear catalog was a mainstay of my childhood.

Living in the rural north woods, we did not have local access to a lot of things. I still have a pair of snow shoes I bought at about age 12 from Sears. Their catalog carried everything from hunting rifles & shotguns to power tools to long underwear.

In addition to buying things from those catalogs, we educated ourselves about the outside world with them.

[hlthe2b]

12. the special Christmas edition's arrival was always a treat at my house....

Though we could only dream, as my parents were immensely practical and not prone to "spoiling".

[Hassin Bin Sober]

13. I remember building something once with my dad and he stood back and said "Solid as Sears"

It used to be you could always rely on parts for their tools.

Last year we were trying to fin a blade for my brother's 20 year old radial arm saw. No luck in the big store (after looking for help in what looked like a poorly stocked ghost town) "try our small tool hardware store" they told us. We run over there - " we don't sell that size any more so we don't carry the blades. Would you like to buy a NEW saw?"

Bye Sears.

[4Q2u2]

4. Rational Thought?

Yes I always associate rational thought with a winner takes all death match. People would never cut corners or cheat to get an upper hand.

[jsr]

5. Recommend

[QuestForSense]

7. The only thing this guy ever truly earned is his reputation.

And even that he did over the backs of others.

[Proud Public Servant]

9. Eddie Lampert didn't kill Sears

Make no mistake: he's an idiot. But Sears dies as part of the general extiction of the middle-class department store -- and, perhaps, the middle class. Sears got squeezed: more downscale retailers (Walmart, Target) took a fair bit of its clientele by offering cheaper goods; specialty stores (Old Navy, Home Depot, Best Buy) took a hunk, offering an economy of scale that a department store never could; the internet siphoned off even more custormers; and the department store Borg that is Macy's took care of many of the rest. Lampert may finish it off, but Sears was a terminal case without hope of recovery before he got started.

[drmeow]

22. There are two things which

I think had the potential to keep Sears afloat or at least to have staying power which I fear Lampert will have destroyed - Kenmore and Craftsman. I think there was a time they could have downsized some and retained the reputation and quality of those lines. I think Lampert put the nail in that coffin.

[Proud Public Servant]

25. I've had that thought myself

Large appliances and tools are more immune to online retailing than other types of goods, and Sears' brands had great reputations and tons of good will behind them. They could have dumped clothing altogether (and for the better, given how badly they ruined Lands End -- and that was before Lampert took over) and reinvented themselves as a housewares store. But they needed to have done that 20 years ago, and nobody seems to have had they vision. Lampert has put the nail in the coffin, as you say, but you only nail a coffin shut to begin with once the corpse is cold.

[drmeow]

29. I don't know

I think they could have done it more recently than 20 years ago - it has only been in the last few years that the Kenmore brand has slipped in quality. It is the quality slippage which is going to kill them. I was never much of a Sears retail shopper but I've been a pretty reliable Kenmore buyer. But Kenmore is no longer regularly sitting at the top of the Consumer Reports rating tables and that it is a reasonably new thing. It is not clear if Kenmore has sunk, the other brands have improved, or both. I suspect both. Of course, if Kenmore is no longer a good brand, let it die. But it is a little sad.

Oh, and Diehard, too

[packman]

10. Sears, A&P, Montgomery Wards

Stores that were the mainstay of middle-America. Just sad echoes now. The great A&P (Atlantic and Pacific) grocery stores are down to a handful after being bought out by a German group and declaring multiple bankruptcies. Montgomery Wards now is more of a catalog store than a retail chain and Sears, once the up-scale store for the middle class, is a sad old man sitting on the curb waiting for the end. Sometimes I hate change.

[Blue_Tires]

14. Woolworths too...

[Diremoon]

11. randian garbage

This is typical of the results achieve around the world with laissez faire economic. Not only should Lampert be fired, whoever hired him should be fired. Rand was a good writer when compared to an elementary school student, but her stories are complete tripe. Her plots are contrived and the characters are two dimensional. For any grown person can get caught up in this brings into question the persons mental capacity.

[Brigid]

15. If I have to . . .

I will go back to ordering my favorite Lands' End clothing items online. I never shop at Sears othetwise, haven't for years. I remember that great big Sears catalog. And Chicago once had lots of good jobs working in their catalog department. It's sad.

[yurbud]

16. I think they stopped carrying Land's End. I went in there a couple of times for that

alone.

[Brigid]

19. The Sears stores here have Lands' End departments.

You can order from the Lands' End catalog there too.

[yurbud]

21. I'll have to check it out again, thanks.

[yurbud]

18. masters of universe or spoiled inbred moral degenerates? You decide!

[yurbud]

20. read the article. In addition to crappy management, he tried the usual MBA three card monte:

mergers, firing, cooking the books (figuratively) to make the stock look better.

Anything but delivering a better product or service.

There should be a place for MBA's at companies, but they should ALWAYS be subordinate to people who have a drive to make things or provide a service--to do something other than just move money from other people's pockets into their own.

[Cha]

23. I saw this the other day in a random link on

the net and saved it in case I ever needed to pop it out.

thanks for bringing here, MinM. The Harder They Fall

[jmowreader]

24. My little sister used to buy Christmas for Eddie

That was the only job she ever left by telling the CEO to go fuck himself. (Yes, she had a new job set up before she did this.)

She tells this story: One fine Christmas one of her Chinese suppliers had made a unique stuffed animal. But they only made enough that Sears and Walmart could get them. She flew back to headquarters, explained this new toy and how great it would sell, and said "we need to charge x amount for them."

Eddie said no. He wanted to charge x plus $5.

"But Walmart is charging x."

'I don't care what Walmart is charging.'

After the Christmas season was over and 80 percent of them came back to the distribution centers - Walmart sold the fuck out of them - Eddie called her into his office and chewed her ass for half an hour for not knowing how to buy Christmas merchandise. Said the only reason their sales were so low was she bought stupid shit no one wanted...within the hour she had lined up a new job (buying Christmas for a regional retailer) told Eddie to go screw himself and put the house on the market.

[SummerSnow]

26. damn. everything is ruined.

[TheBlackAdder]

28. Their website is just a hot mess. nt