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A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

The reason big box retail continues to chug on like a shambling zombie is because there are many, many items that it doesn't make sense to order and wait for, and in many parts of the country, it's much easier to simply go to the Walmart, buy whatever you need from the poor bastard working there, and then go on your merry way.

If drone delivery turns out to be the blockbuster that it promises to be, I'm willing to bet a lot of money that big box retail will die a slow death in city centers, but will continue to live on in rural America. Why the gently caress would you go into the Walmart to get...I dunno, bleach, when you can just have it drone delivered in 20 minutes? Every time I see some new statistic on deliveries made, I'm reminded of that guy who tried to live off internet shipping in the early 00s. He wasn't wrong about the future, he was just thinking too far ahead.

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OhFunny
Jun 26, 2013

EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC
http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1

A nice informative read on Sears' troubles and the causes.

It's CEO Eddie Lampert is gonna walk away with more money than less despite driving the company into the ground.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

OhFunny posted:

http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1

A nice informative read on Sears' troubles and the causes.

It's CEO Eddie Lampert is gonna walk away with more money than less despite driving the company into the ground.

Guys like Lampert are fantastic for making the numbers immediately better but god awful at actually understanding how to run a good store.

Horseshoe theory
Mar 7, 2005

OhFunny posted:

It's CEO Eddie Lampert is gonna walk away with more money than less despite driving the company into the ground.

Given that he's historically been an asset vulture in the mold of an Icahn, Pickins, Singer, etc., you would hope he knows how to strip every last cent of value for himself. Of course, like most of those guys, he also gets into litigation for breach of duty, unjust enrichment, etc. and usually they end up paying back a few cents to settle the matter.

Dmitri-9
Nov 30, 2004

There's something really sexy about Scrooge McDuck. I love Uncle Scrooge.

OhFunny posted:

http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1

A nice informative read on Sears' troubles and the causes.

It's CEO Eddie Lampert is gonna walk away with more money than less despite driving the company into the ground.

Wow a membership rewards card. An idea so innovative it was implemented by everyone in 1999.

Proud Christian Mom
Dec 20, 2006
READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD
I thought it was all some calculated ploy by Lampert to drain the entire company for the benefit of his primary shareholder(his own fund) but then I read he went and put his own money back in so now I'm convinced he's just a Wall Street idiot that has no idea how companies actually become successful

Liquid Communism
Mar 9, 2004


Out here, everything hurts.




Proud Christian Mom posted:

I thought it was all some calculated ploy by Lampert to drain the entire company for the benefit of his primary shareholder(his own fund) but then I read he went and put his own money back in so now I'm convinced he's just a Wall Street idiot that has no idea how companies actually become successful

Consider that he will likely make a benefit on his taxes when the company goes under with the 'loss' of that money -and- use it as an item in fighting his inevitable breach of duty and unjust enrichment filings.

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

ToxicSlurpee posted:

Retail places used to make a point of ensuring that there was somebody somewhere who knew stuff about what was being sold.
Yeah except there's a slew of expertise about practically any product available online, including user reviews, so people are increasingly walking into stores knowing exactly what they want and they don't give a poo poo about anything but price at that point, so the value of having knowledgeable sales staff has tanked.

asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

OhFunny posted:

http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1

A nice informative read on Sears' troubles and the causes.

It's CEO Eddie Lampert is gonna walk away with more money than less despite driving the company into the ground.

No he has not and will not make money from sears. It's a question of how much he ends up loosing.

Proud Christian Mom posted:

I thought it was all some calculated ploy by Lampert to drain the entire company for the benefit of his primary shareholder(his own fund) but then I read he went and put his own money back in so now I'm convinced he's just a Wall Street idiot that has no idea how companies actually become successful

Yes this. Like the Apple guy who screwed up JC Penny.

Cease to Hope
Dec 12, 2011

OneEightHundred posted:

Yeah except there's a slew of expertise about practically any product available online, including user reviews, so people are increasingly walking into stores knowing exactly what they want and they don't give a poo poo about anything but price at that point, so the value of having knowledgeable sales staff has tanked.

The hollowing of service labor and the emphasis on consumer-accessible product evaluation (which pre-dates the internet; Consumer Reports had a huge impact) happened simultaneously and fed off of each other.

Badger of Basra
Jul 26, 2007

OhFunny posted:

http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1

A nice informative read on Sears' troubles and the causes.

It's CEO Eddie Lampert is gonna walk away with more money than less despite driving the company into the ground.

I love this quote:

"In an environment where new companies like Uber can raise almost unlimited capital, what are the implications for older companies that are held to a very different standard when it comes to profitability and regulation?" Lampert wrote.

In a way he's not wrong - Uber is losing a heroic amount of money but VC morons can't give them more fast enough because ~disruption~

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

asdf32 posted:

Yes this. Like the Apple guy who screwed up JC Penny.
What's going on with Sears is orders of magnitudes worse. Like JCP's plans sounded like the thing that you could make a long shot case for working outside of, you know "JCP is a mall anchor and you can't do everyday low pricing at malls because the rent is too high," and they wised up pretty fast to the fact that it was failing and started reversing course.

Sears by comparison is chasing an impossible and barely coherent long-term goal that has nothing to do with their current business via a management strategy that's completely insane.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

Badger of Basra posted:

I love this quote:

"In an environment where new companies like Uber can raise almost unlimited capital, what are the implications for older companies that are held to a very different standard when it comes to profitability and regulation?" Lampert wrote.

In a way he's not wrong - Uber is losing a heroic amount of money but VC morons can't give them more fast enough because ~disruption~

Tech stocks are hot as gently caress right now and there isn't really much else that hasn't had all the blood sucked out of it. Everybody wants to buy the next Microsoft or Google which will see exponential returns. Problem is when those companies had cheap stocks they were quaint little upstarts that a lot of people never thought would get as big as they are. Microsoft especially.

Doctor Butts
May 21, 2002

OneEightHundred posted:


Speaking of Macy's, one of their closures is apparently in a mall near where I used to live that's in the process of converting the mall into an outlet center. Apparently they're having a hard time getting people to give enough of a poo poo any more so their solution is to give make them give a poo poo by just sending prices to the floor, and outlet centers are the only retail sector that's growing. Maybe that's another future in the cards for retail, the end of high-markup "shopping experiences."

I hope so. Places like Macy's are just way too loving expensive for everything. People just don't have the money these days for that poo poo.

Fried Watermelon
Dec 29, 2008


One of my favorite Big Box stories just happened a few years ago.

Target decided to open up a bunch of stores in Canada and once they realized people didn't want a more expensive Wal-Mart with less stock the sales tanked. In a gross overeaction Target decided to close all 133 stores.

The best part is they decided to pay the CEO a severance more than all the other employees combined:

"Gregg Steinhafel took a total of $61 million U.S. from Target when he left the company last spring, according to Fortune's calculations. Meanwhile, the fund Target set up to pay employees as it winds down operations over the next four months is set at $56 million U.S. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/21/target-ceo-severance-canadian-workers_n_6517272.html

DeathSandwich
Apr 24, 2008

I fucking hate puzzles.

asdf32 posted:

No he has not and will not make money from sears. It's a question of how much he ends up loosing.

If he loses, it's not going to be that much. Part of what he's done so far is that he sold the buildings of 235 Sears stores to himself, via a investment trust that he created two years ago. What 'personal money' he's investing in Sears he's extracting right out again as rent the stores are now paying to Seritage. In advance of bankrupcy he's selling off Sears' house brands and I pretty much expect that before the end of the year anything that's even remotely profitable will be spun off into it's own LLCs or companies leaving the dessicated husk of the Sears brand to wither with literally nothing left to its name. Those buildings he conveniently sold to himself or the band names he sold off while they were worth something won't have to be bargain basement auctioned off in the process and he's free to turn around, cut the buildings up into strip malls, and rent them out to the next comers.

He's setting up Sears to fail because there's more money in it for him to ensure that the company fails RIGHT NOW than it is for him to continue to let the company hemorrhage money for the next 5-10 years while the upper management continues to churn and bumble in his Libertarian Dream World.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

DeathSandwich posted:

If he loses, it's not going to be that much. Part of what he's done so far is that he sold the buildings of 235 Sears stores to himself, via a investment trust that he created two years ago. What 'personal money' he's investing in Sears he's extracting right out again as rent the stores are now paying to Seritage. In advance of bankrupcy he's selling off Sears' house brands and I pretty much expect that before the end of the year anything that's even remotely profitable will be spun off into it's own LLCs or companies leaving the dessicated husk of the Sears brand to wither with literally nothing left to its name. Those buildings he conveniently sold to himself or the band names he sold off while they were worth something won't have to be bargain basement auctioned off in the process and he's free to turn around, cut the buildings up into strip malls, and rent them out to the next comers.

He's setting up Sears to fail because there's more money in it for him to ensure that the company fails RIGHT NOW than it is for him to continue to let the company hemorrhage money for the next 5-10 years while the upper management continues to churn and bumble in his Libertarian Dream World.

You're making the mistaken assumption that getting those buildings "cut up" and re-occupied in any sort of quick timescale is a sure thing. I wouldn't count on that, when a lot of those locations are in shopping centers that are already dying or dead outside of the Sears store.

It's just as likely that all the buildings he bought in on end up sitting empty but costing money to maintain for several years or more after their Sears store closes.

FilthyImp
Sep 30, 2002

Anime Deviant

fishmech posted:

You're making the mistaken assumption that getting those buildings "cut up" and re-occupied in any sort of quick timescale is a sure thing. I wouldn't count on that, when a lot of those locations are in shopping centers that are already dying or dead outside of the Sears store.
It's not uncommon for some of these mall-ish strips to be redeveloped as luxury mixed-use developments. RentLEASE at the historic LeSears, a resort-like experience where you can live and work and laugh in the heart of [area]. Dog walk, high speed internet, barista bar, outdoor theatre, and a private game room make your life at home as fun as it is functional. Need something to get the day started? Walk downstairs to our ColdPressed juice bar, pamper yourself at the nail spa, or grab a cup of coffee at the coffee bar.

The Sears Tower in downtown/east Los Angeles was recently turned into condos, for example. And a giant Ikea in Burbank is being converted into a Small Home Community (conveniently across from a mall). There's a shuttered Montgomery Ward in the San Fernando Valley being turned into condos, too.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

A White Guy posted:

On the topic of dying retail chains, I discovered (To my utter fascination) that my rural country town has a Kmart in it. I went in out of a sense of morbid curiosity. It's like more expensive Walmart, too expensive to actually be Walmart, too lovely to be a Target. All the staff were wearing purple shirts with various cringe-inducing and canned slogans on it.

There was, until recently, a KMart in Macon, GA and I went in one day, also out of morbin curiosity.

It was incredibly unorganized, only three people were working, and they just had boxes of inventory out laying around still not unpacked. The electronics were all almost entirely knock offs, but overpriced, there was an abandoned Olan Mills Portrait Studio that hadn't been sealed off, a food court that was in disarray. It was kinda odd, like a gigantic ghost store.

Fried Watermelon posted:

One of my favorite Big Box stories just happened a few years ago.

Target decided to open up a bunch of stores in Canada and once they realized people didn't want a more expensive Wal-Mart with less stock the sales tanked. In a gross overeaction Target decided to close all 133 stores.

The best part is they decided to pay the CEO a severance more than all the other employees combined:

"Gregg Steinhafel took a total of $61 million U.S. from Target when he left the company last spring, according to Fortune's calculations. Meanwhile, the fund Target set up to pay employees as it winds down operations over the next four months is set at $56 million U.S. "

http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/01/21/target-ceo-severance-canadian-workers_n_6517272.html

Its rather disgusting how many of these companies bitch and moan about minimum wage but give bad CEOs severance that would've paid minimum wage plus an extra 10% on top of that for their entire Retail staff.

Goatse James Bond
Mar 28, 2010


I've made a huge mistake.

DeathSandwich posted:

If he loses, it's not going to be that much. Part of what he's done so far is that he sold the buildings of 235 Sears stores to himself, via a investment trust that he created two years ago. What 'personal money' he's investing in Sears he's extracting right out again as rent the stores are now paying to Seritage. In advance of bankrupcy he's selling off Sears' house brands and I pretty much expect that before the end of the year anything that's even remotely profitable will be spun off into it's own LLCs or companies leaving the dessicated husk of the Sears brand to wither with literally nothing left to its name. Those buildings he conveniently sold to himself or the band names he sold off while they were worth something won't have to be bargain basement auctioned off in the process and he's free to turn around, cut the buildings up into strip malls, and rent them out to the next comers.

He's setting up Sears to fail because there's more money in it for him to ensure that the company fails RIGHT NOW than it is for him to continue to let the company hemorrhage money for the next 5-10 years while the upper management continues to churn and bumble in his Libertarian Dream World.

:911:

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK
Sep 11, 2008

Anytime I need to see your face I just close my eyes
And I am taken to a place
Where your crystal minds and magenta feelings
Take up shelter in the base of my spine
Sweet like a chica cherry cola

-Cheap Trick

Nap Ghost

fishmech posted:

You're making the mistaken assumption that getting those buildings "cut up" and re-occupied in any sort of quick timescale is a sure thing. I wouldn't count on that, when a lot of those locations are in shopping centers that are already dying or dead outside of the Sears store.

It's just as likely that all the buildings he bought in on end up sitting empty but costing money to maintain for several years or more after their Sears store closes.

There was a Sears home center or seth in near my apartment and no one moved in for 2 or 3 years after it went out.

Eventually the building was sold and it was turned into a car dealership las year.

CommieGIR
Aug 22, 2006

The blue glow is a feature, not a bug


Pillbug

exploded mummy posted:

There was a Sears home center or seth in near my apartment and no one moved in for 2 or 3 years after it went out.

Eventually the building was sold and it was turned into a car dealership las year.

The last 'Sears' near our house closed last year. Kind sad, because we bought our fridge and TV from there when we moved into our new house, and they were the only major appliance stores near to us. Also had a lot of Craftsman stuff.

Got turned into a Dollar General.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

FilthyImp posted:

It's not uncommon for some of these mall-ish strips to be redeveloped as luxury mixed-use developments. RentLEASE at the historic LeSears, a resort-like experience where you can live and work and laugh in the heart of [area]. Dog walk, high speed internet, barista bar, outdoor theatre, and a private game room make your life at home as fun as it is functional. Need something to get the day started? Walk downstairs to our ColdPressed juice bar, pamper yourself at the nail spa, or grab a cup of coffee at the coffee bar.

The Sears Tower in downtown/east Los Angeles was recently turned into condos, for example. And a giant Ikea in Burbank is being converted into a Small Home Community (conveniently across from a mall). There's a shuttered Montgomery Ward in the San Fernando Valley being turned into condos, too.

But it's also not uncommon for those projects to stall out and never open, or even get past the planning stage. He'd need most of those properties he had his company buy to successfully get redeveloped to come out ahead.

You're not going to get a luxury development out of the Sears in some ratty suburb 40 miles out of the nearest big city.

exploded mummy posted:

There was a Sears home center or seth in near my apartment and no one moved in for 2 or 3 years after it went out.

Eventually the building was sold and it was turned into a car dealership las year.

Yeah this sort of thing happens a lot. I'd bet the car dealership was able to heavily undercut the price the property owner originally expected to get too.

OJ MIST 2 THE DICK
Sep 11, 2008

Anytime I need to see your face I just close my eyes
And I am taken to a place
Where your crystal minds and magenta feelings
Take up shelter in the base of my spine
Sweet like a chica cherry cola

-Cheap Trick

Nap Ghost

fishmech posted:

Yeah this sort of thing happens a lot. I'd bet the car dealership was able to heavily undercut the price the property owner originally expected to get too.

Admittedly I live on the Massachusetts side of the NH-Mass border and there's a big retail district right on the border that takes advantage of NH's 0% sales tax and that would hurt any major store development in the region. (Cars are a different matter, since the Mass RMV doesn't let you register a car until excise tax is paid)

rscott
Dec 10, 2009
I thought he sold all the valuable properties to his reit and left the lovely ones under corporate control?

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

rscott posted:

I thought he sold all the valuable properties to his reit and left the lovely ones under corporate control?

His idea of valuable, which doesn't seem to comport with reality. Just like how all of his other decisions have been fuckups.

There's also that a lot of the most valuable Sears/Kmart locations aren't in the position to be forcibly sold to his investment trust.

asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.

DeathSandwich posted:

If he loses, it's not going to be that much. Part of what he's done so far is that he sold the buildings of 235 Sears stores to himself, via a investment trust that he created two years ago. What 'personal money' he's investing in Sears he's extracting right out again as rent the stores are now paying to Seritage. In advance of bankrupcy he's selling off Sears' house brands and I pretty much expect that before the end of the year anything that's even remotely profitable will be spun off into it's own LLCs or companies leaving the dessicated husk of the Sears brand to wither with literally nothing left to its name. Those buildings he conveniently sold to himself or the band names he sold off while they were worth something won't have to be bargain basement auctioned off in the process and he's free to turn around, cut the buildings up into strip malls, and rent them out to the next comers.

He's setting up Sears to fail because there's more money in it for him to ensure that the company fails RIGHT NOW than it is for him to continue to let the company hemorrhage money for the next 5-10 years while the upper management continues to churn and bumble in his Libertarian Dream World.

The best that I can tell he's probably loosing over a billion or hundreds of millions at least. Everything you're talking about is standard bankruptcy damage control or possibly last ditch efforts to generate cash to save the company.

CommieGIR posted:

There was, until recently, a KMart in Macon, GA and I went in one day, also out of morbin curiosity.

It was incredibly unorganized, only three people were working, and they just had boxes of inventory out laying around still not unpacked. The electronics were all almost entirely knock offs, but overpriced, there was an abandoned Olan Mills Portrait Studio that hadn't been sealed off, a food court that was in disarray. It was kinda odd, like a gigantic ghost store.


Its rather disgusting how many of these companies bitch and moan about minimum wage but give bad CEOs severance that would've paid minimum wage plus an extra 10% on top of that for their entire Retail staff.

Sears are sad and creepy. I wanted to buy a grill from them over the summer and picked one out that but then I started looking for someone to help me buy it. There was literally a lady standing in one spot for multiple minutes yelling "hello?" while I walked around finding no one.

I went up the street to Home Depot where someone was helping me load a grill into the car within minutes.

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!
I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.

Professor Beetus
Apr 12, 2007

They can fight us
But they'll never Beetus

OneEightHundred posted:

I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.

The appeal of Kmart is that if you are ever feeling good and optimistic, you can go and get a big dose of despair absolutely free.

BarbarianElephant
Feb 12, 2015
The fairy of forgiveness has removed your red text.

OneEightHundred posted:

I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.

Also no fresh foods, just frozen dinners and food science's finest HFCS concoctions.

fishmech
Jul 16, 2006

by VideoGames
Salad Prong

OneEightHundred posted:

I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.

Kmart started just before Wal-Mart, and was a national chain for a long time when Wal-Mart was only present in the South. Kmart had gone national by the 70s (around 1977), while Wal-Mart didn't have stores outside the South until 1977 when they entered Illinois. It took til 1995 for Wal-Mart to have stores in every state with the last state they expanded to being Vermont.

Kmart and Wal-Mart were basically interchangeable for a very long time, with Kmart being available in more places and better known.


BarbarianElephant posted:

Also no fresh foods, just frozen dinners and food science's finest HFCS concoctions.

Wal-Mart didn't really have a fresh foods selection for a long time They didn't really have supermarket level food selections until the late 90s.

OhFunny
Jun 26, 2013

EXTREMELY PISSED AT THE DNC

Nonsense posted:

American Apparel is probably next.

http://fortune.com/2017/01/10/gildan-activewear-american-apparel-bankruptcy-bid/

Canadian apparel maker Gildan Activewear has purchased American Apparel. It won't take any of its stores. Only the American Apparel brand and some of its manufacturing.

ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

-=SEND HELP=-


Pillbug

OneEightHundred posted:

I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.

It used to be you could go to K-Mart and basically it would be a discount department store. Actual department stores would have designer stuff and fancy stuff but would be a lot more expensive but not much higher in quality. Prettier, of course, as were the stores. K-Mart was the place that didn't sink lots of money into fancy decorations and making the place look and feel fancy. The stuff would generally be of non-awful quality. Some stuff was hit or miss but it wasn't cheap bargain bin garbage either. You could find name brand stuff and often the same stuff as the department stores for less. If you cared about price K-Mart was alright. You knew you weren't getting top of the line stuff and there were a ton of people who refused to shop they because they thought they were too good for K-Mart.

Now a hell of a lot of what they sell is utter garbage, the stores are poorly maintained, and like you said they're basically Walmart but shittier.

Freakazoid_
Jul 5, 2013


Buglord

OneEightHundred posted:

I don't really understand what the appeal of Kmart is even supposed to be, it's like someone decided to just make a Wal-Mart clone except with prices higher than Target.

I lost my local kmart a couple years ago so I never have to know.

However I was recently inside a fred meyers and while I didn't buy anything, I appreciate being able to sit on their nice display furniture. I also discovered rotating recliners seats, they're like an office chair but I can sleep in it. The internet never told me that!

asdf32
May 15, 2010

I lust for childrens' deaths. Ask me about how I don't care if my kids die.
KMart got beaten on both sides - wal-mart is cheaper and Target is cooler and then it got bought by an idiot.

rscott
Dec 10, 2009
For a long time the biggest distinguishing feature of Kmart was that they had layaway and Walmart didn't but then I guess they got rid of it and there was literally no reason to ever go to a Kmart unless it was the only place in your transportation range to shop. I worked at one in high school, and quit shortly after they merged with Sears. Even back then there was a feeling of decline and that the merger was an attempt to save two fading companies. I'm surprised it's taken this long for the whole thing to unwind.

JonathonSpectre
Jul 23, 2003

I replaced the Shermatar and text with this because I don't wanna see racial slurs every time you post what the fuck

Soiled Meat

DrNutt posted:

The appeal of Kmart is that if you are ever feeling good and optimistic, you can go and get a big dose of despair absolutely free.

This is my favorite post of 2017 so far and spot-loving-on. If you go in a K-Mart don't stay too long or you'll be devoured by the Nothing from the Neverending Story. It's a Cleveland Browns-esque Factory of Sadness.

My town had a K-Mart that was basically the only, uh, "big box" store and over the course of about 10 years I watched it go from a decent-enough Target clone to a loving run-down ghost town with the ambience of a third-world flea market. poo poo was just sort of haphazardly set on shelves with no real rhyme or reason, CD players in the same aisle as bug spray in the same aisle as baseball gloves. Cardboard boxes full of knock-off GI Joes strewn all over the toy section, things just scattered on the ground, bottles of shampoo and conditioner rolling around by the motor oil. You were constantly on edge waiting to be attacked by a post-apocalyptic gang because somehow you had wandered into that destroyed big box store you find early in Fallout 3. It was like the workers there had gone past the don't-give-a-poo poo level into active, hateful malevolence.

A few years ago a huge parcel next to it got bought and turned into a Super Wal-Mart and it sent that K-Mart screaming into the abyss in like 2 months.

When the K-Mart was closing its doors it had one of those "WE ARE EVEN SELLING THE loving SHELVES PEOPLE" sales and I went in to see if I could find some bargains. I did find some cheap, meaningless little things like clothes hangers or a fog-free shaving mirror for $1, but there were still things in there absurdly, absurdly overpriced. I'm talking $60+ for DS (not 3DS) games and $23+ for loving music CDs. I'm laughing right now thinking about how insane it all was, I felt like I was in the fever dream of a dying old ad executive. I bought my trinkets from a mute and obviously pissed-off cashier and when I said "Thanks!" at the end of the transaction she said, "Whatever."

Anyone here old enough to remember when K-Mart had "blue light specials?" They'd roll out a rack of pants or plates or some other loving thing and turn on a blue light and make an announcement over the loudspeaker that began with the famous, "ATTENTION K-MART SHOPPERS... there is a blue light special in... AISLE SEVEN!" and there would a God-damned stampede towards that flashing light.

Owlofcreamcheese
May 22, 2005
Probation
Can't post for 9 years!
Buglord

rscott posted:

For a long time the biggest distinguishing feature of Kmart was that they had layaway and Walmart didn't but then I guess they got rid of it and there was literally no reason to ever go to a Kmart unless it was the only place in your transportation range to shop. I worked at one in high school, and quit shortly after they merged with Sears. Even back then there was a feeling of decline and that the merger was an attempt to save two fading companies. I'm surprised it's taken this long for the whole thing to unwind.

I specifically needed cargo pants for something and I thought "where could I buy cargo pants on short notice" and went to k-mart because it seemed like a store that would sell cargo pants (they did)

OneEightHundred
Feb 28, 2008

Soon, we will be unstoppable!

JonathonSpectre posted:

I'm talking $60+ for DS (not 3DS) games and $23+ for loving music CDs.
TBF that's kind of meaningless as far as Kmart is concerned, when a store goes out of business they hire a liquidator and the liquidators just set all of the item prices to whatever they feel like, which can and very frequently does include jacking them up.

rscott posted:

For a long time the biggest distinguishing feature of Kmart was that they had layaway and Walmart didn't but then I guess they got rid of it
They got rid of it after credit cards had become so widespread that there was no point, why bother putting something in layaway when you can just charge it and take it home?

But then the other point of layaway was that their prices were poo poo unless something was on sale, whereas their competitors' prices weren't poo poo. Maybe if Kmart was one step above Target in quality, it'd make sense, but I don't remember it ever being even one step above Wal-Mart.

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ToxicSlurpee
Nov 5, 2003

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OneEightHundred posted:

TBF that's kind of meaningless as far as Kmart is concerned, when a store goes out of business they hire a liquidator and the liquidators just set all of the item prices to whatever they feel like, which can and very frequently does include jacking them up.

There was a big kerfluffle where I'm originally from...I want to say around 2003 or so when a big liquidator company like that got slapped hard for fraud. What some companies like that would do was mark the stock up then put adverts out that said "BIG CLOSING SALE! EVERYTHING MUST GO! EVERYTHING ON SALE! BUY BUY BUY!!!" It was apparently a pretty common practice already but they got greedy and people noticed. It was stuff like something that was $10 at the Walmart literally in the next building over being $18 at the closeout "sale."

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