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OhFunny posted:http://www.businessinsider.com/sears-failing-stores-closing-edward-lampert-bankruptcy-chances-2017-1 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.
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Jan 9, 2017 05:04
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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. 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. 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.
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Jan 11, 2017 04:42
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KMart got beaten on both sides - wal-mart is cheaper and Target is cooler and then it got bought by an idiot.
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Jan 12, 2017 00:33
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Craptacular! posted:I wonder how much the apparel retail market will be killed by outlet malls, which I expect to survive, perhaps even thrive, through the mallpocalypse. Yet American Apparel is dead. Retail margins are slim and like everything else retailing is its own thing. Being good at it warrants profit. Most manufacturers want nothing to do with it for good reason. Vertical integration is often more about brand experience than capturing slim retail margins.
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Apr 8, 2017 03:34
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By contrast though, REI is thriving.
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Apr 21, 2017 03:48
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fishmech posted:Well REI is also organized as a co-operative enterprise and doesn't participate in wild expansion sprees - they have less than 150 stores nationwide. This means they didn't overleverage themselves in a chase for shareholder profits over the past few decades the way other similar stores did. Pretty much. REI was my high school job and although they are very good EMS was a good competitor from a quality and customer service point of view. So is LLBean. So I assume REI's more steady expansion strategy is serving them well. The coop thing also helps brand loyalty and provides a lot of data to guide new store locations etc.
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Apr 21, 2017 19:58
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Morbus posted:I think there are a lot of reasons why REI is doing so well. Though step into an REI and you'll see that while there is specialized climbing gear and $600 backpacks the majority of the floor space is clothing which has plenty of competitors (and the high end stuff has decent local competition particularly right near the mountains/resorts etc). You can find North Face and Patagonia anywhere. The general camping stuff like tents and stoves is well covered by places like dicks sporting goods, bass-pro and even target and wal-mart besides EMS and Amazon. So yeah that's why I think customer service and knowledgeable employees plus the loyalty and management sanity of the coop system are what works for them. All of that holds up in the internet era. They've also always had a good house brand Though I have to say that it's hard to stomach their prices at this point in my life. I bought a down jacket and "soft-shell" at costco for $90 total and could have spent quadrouple that at REI minimum
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Apr 23, 2017 01:41
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Crabtree posted:The combination of the horribly quick development pace of technology often out-moding several hundred dollar pieces of tech within months, the over-saturation of large stores trying to sell everything - and thus always being too ineffective to compete with specialty stores or the internet and thus shrinkage of their game or electronic booths if not outright disappearance from the likes of Sams Club; and the weird shelf life of video game and their prices depending on what you mean by electronics. If you also meant appliances, replace Best Buy/Amazon with Home Depot/Lowe's. Over the course of the 90s -00s and the death of Circuit City, electronics have proved themselves to be a front that you either have to dedicate yourself to or you're going to get hosed by it when a newer, flashier store sells them better than you. I'd also add that electronics are ideal for shipping because they're usually compact but high cost making online competition particularly effective (and this was true before Amazon went crazy building logistics/shipping).
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May 6, 2017 14:23
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fishmech posted:Yeah these are all over the place in the US too. Most people don't seem to want to bother with them though. My wife liked them but I couldn't stand it and accidentally shoplifted tons of stuff when when using it.
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May 12, 2017 04:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Selling assets, brands owned by Sears, etc. Selling real-estate. Sears is a pretty old company that owns a lot of things. Or did, anyway; if memory serves a lot of that stuff has been sold. He also has a holding company that controls K-Mart and Sears. The big thing to look at here is that those companies actually own a ton of exclusive things. Lampert also controls a hedge fund and those things get up to all sorts of financial fuckery and shenanigans where tanking and pillaging a company can turn a profit. Yes he's lost his mind and is losing tons of money and is going to lose more. Some specific things he does will turn a profit but overall he owns a company and is tanking it and is losing doing it.
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May 16, 2017 01:54
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fishmech posted:Actually the people like you who think a place no longer getting rented means a business is losing huge sums of money is what's "loving dumb". Land lords make money by renting. Not renting is bad including with respect to property value. Opportunity cost is thing. So is financing costs and taxes.
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Jun 4, 2017 04:01
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PT6A posted:Yeah, if you have three buildings in a small area (for example) and they're 15% vacant, you're not going to drop the rent to get a lower vacancy rate because then all your other tenants will realize they can pay you less money, so even with higher occupancy rates you're making less money. Well 15% isn't that high considering the average is typically around 10% or so. Vacancy=inventory so there always should be some. But the idea that deliberately high vacancy rates above that are a common profit strategy would be false. A 20% rate needs to create 25% higher rents just to break even. Vacant store front also depress the whole are so they're doubly bad for that reason. My town has a storefront vacancy problem right now but I guarantee it's not a profit making strategy it's simply stupidity and mis-management and undoubtedly temporary.
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Jun 4, 2017 04:30
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OwlFancier posted:I believe the argument is that the upkeep costs are not particularly substantial especially over large properties which are partially used (as the amenities for the site/building require upkeep on a site/building wide level regardless of how many people are using the space) and that the reliability of property ownership and letting as a form of money making (because you can't conjure more space in developed areas from the ether) makes it a desirable enterprise even if it doesn't have a hypothetically ideal rate of return. Well it depends. As it happens land prices have gone up in many places which has made it easy on many owners that got in at the right places at the right times. But for new property prices have anticipated income baked in so unusually high vacancy rates will likely translate into real loss. And again, opportunity cost is also a real thing Fishmech.
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Jun 4, 2017 16:20
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axeil posted:Wegmans is such a good grocery store I literally drive 40 minutes once a month to go to the one out in Fairfax instead of just walking to the grocery store down the street from my house. It's that much better. We buy a half dozen boxes of wine at a time from wegmans because it's so much cheaper.
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Jun 17, 2017 03:56
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Willie Tomg posted:A big part of the puzzle of your posting just fell into place I really recommend black box to anyone who still looks down on boxed wine. Motronic posted:Seriously.....why would I use store wifi? Data is relatively cheap and I'm not watching 4k movies on my phone while shopping. Right, it's never occurred to me to look for store wifi in the last 5 years. Shared wifi is often worse than 4G anyways.
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Jun 17, 2017 15:10
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Cicero posted:Yeah probably. At least there would be fewer people screwed over and governments facing bankruptcy then. This would be my preferred system as well. 401k's have several problems which make them terrible for retirement. The first is that they're individually managed and people are terrible at investment. Second there are loopholes for removing money for houses and a couple other scenarios which too many people turn to. Third they don't factor in mortality. You need to simply guess how long you're going to live and save a worst case pile of money. If you die early you shortchanged yourself and if you live too long you're screwed. Excess is inheritable, but that's a dumb, costly and unnecessary feature of a retirement plan. Meanwhile pensions can set your benefits based on the averages and you're fine if you love longer. The above is caveated by the flexibility of 401ks where you could invest in a fixed benefit anuity within it but that's not common at all (though something I want to study more for the reasons above).
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Jul 15, 2017 12:54
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OhFunny posted:https://www.reuters.com/article/vitaminworld-bankruptcy/vitamin-world-says-to-file-for-bankruptcy-protection-idUSL2N1LI1WL I just specifically chose to buy my daughter's first lego set from Toys R Us this weekend because I think it would be sad if they disappeared. I get why the toy business is difficult competing against online and, say, Target (which has a great toys/game section) but the joint Toys/Babies R Us thing seems pretty viable to me. People spend tons of money when they get pregnant and often want to see the stuff in person so it gets people going there who logically transition from strollers and bottles to legos and games. On the other hand it sucked dragging an almost two year old through the toy store.
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Sep 12, 2017 03:04
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NerdyMcNerdNerd posted:Edit: Wrong thread, gently caress. I picked out grill at sears but gave up and left when no employee could be found and I heard another customer from afar just yelling “hello?” over and over. At my next stop the greeter at Home Depot was helping me before I got into the store.
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Nov 20, 2017 05:08
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Horseshoe theory posted:Except that Lampert deliberately made himself the senior secured creditor so that he could strip the remaining assets in an inevitable bankruptcy, since it's equity and unsecured creditors that get wiped out. So any acquirer would have to pay Lampert off in order to get assets in a Chapter 7 liquidation. Sears’ debt is irrelevant to what the sears brand on its own is worth and I’ll go out on a limb to say it’s not worth as much as sear’s debt.
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Nov 20, 2017 05:25
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PT6A posted:Murdering, either figuratively or literally, the assholes who crafted a shopping experience that makes you walk all the way through the loving store every time is something I very much support. Just get a cinnamon roll before you start and calm down buddy. Also follow the shortcuts on the map.
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Nov 20, 2017 15:39
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Magic Hate Ball posted:The magic of IKEA is that it's all of the same brand, it's all of a similar, appealing style (the midcentury Nordic look is huge here in Seattle), and there's lots and lots of stuff at the lower end that's very, very cheap. If there were an Amazon Basics in that vein I think it would do really well. Part of the problem with Amazon is choice overload, like if you go and you try to find a desk or a lamp or something you're given a billion things that are of wildly conflicting styles and prices, and an Amazon-brand furniture section would sidestep that. As you say Ikea has some style. Amazon and Besos have no style and you saw this with their phone flop as well as their mediocre cluttered site design. Amazon excels at delivering basics and it’s “basics” brands make a lot of sense but I don’t necessarily see that working particularly well for furniture. Maybe they’ll do ok if they partner with the right people but they haven’t always succeeded here.
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Nov 20, 2017 19:32
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:I don't feel like I know what role high end department stores even fill at this point in history. They are like, big box chain stores, but fancy, but not actually fancy? Like if you are too good to shop for clothes at target but not good enough to be buying from boutique they are the store for your demographic? I think they used to command respect over the big boxes but now upper middle class has no problems buying clothes from Target or Costco. (Like all my new clothes are coming Costco and even my wife buys a ton from them). Separately their pricing has never made sense. I’ve never had anything ring up for the price on the tag Macy’s. I walk to the register prepared to pay X and walk out paying way less than X. That doesn’t seem too smart. On the other hand JCP tried to end this and it killed them.
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Jan 11, 2020 02:12
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Mister Facetious posted:This might be a question better answered in AI, but why do auto manufacturers license/oem vehicles for other companies? Toyota and GM created a joint plant in the 80’s that made the GEO Metro/Corolla before that. It was Toyota’s first US plant. Usually it’s shared ownership but there are examples of licensing (Isuzu rebranded as a Honda SUV when Honda was late to that market). There are lots of joint ventures now for self driving and electric technology. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 00:33 on Jan 12, 2020 |
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Jan 12, 2020 00:30
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 01:48 |
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It seems clear to me that malls need to reinvent themselves as basically climate controlled city blocks with a wider variety of entertainment and activity. Like don't cluster all the (cheap) food options in one corner, put cafes and restaurants throughout and open them into central walkways with 'outdoor' seating. Have more bars, play structures for kids and activities (whatever the current trends are: breweries and ax throwing). Just because clothes shopping has declined doesn't mean people don't want large climate controlled spaces. In my area these outdoor fake city bloc style mixed use shopping/housing/entertainment centers are popping up but in the northeast in the dead of winter it actually kind of sucks. Nothing stops indoor malls from emulating that experience. I get that some malls are sort of doing this but I was shocked how boring the local high end mall was when I visited for the first time in years (desperately looking for a place to take the kids on a freezing Saturday).
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Feb 22, 2020 15:20
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