Sears Holdings (which owns both Sears and Kmart) has been bleeding money for a very long time, and sales in both chains have been terrible for years; both of them are examples of failing to adapt, and losing their customers to other retailers (both brick-and-mortar and online). They didn’t even run TV ads for either Sears nor Kmart during the Christmas shopping season last year.
One of the big reasons why Sears Holdings hasn’t just closed up shop already is that they’ve been able to prop up their balance sheet by selling off real estate (i.e., stores), as well as selling off the brand names that Sears held, which had some brand equity behind them (they sold Craftsman, they’re now selling Kenmore appliances through Amazon, etc.). But, that shell game can’t last forever.
KMart was the direct descendent of the S.S. Kresge chain of dime stores. People blamed KMart for the death of small-town department stores. (And WalMart for the death of small-town shopping in general.)
People blamed malls for killing both downtown AND the neighborhood shopping centers.
For that matter, people blamed Sears and Montgomery Wards and their mail-order catalogs for killing rural general stores.
Sears didn’t even have a brick and mortar store for its first 30 years. I’m sure the 1892 Donald Trump would have accused them of ripping off the Post Office by mailing those packages all over the country.
And, frankly, what killed Kmart was Wal-Mart and Target becoming national chains in the 1980s and 1990s, and being better at being discount retailers than Kmart was. Kmart was already well into its tailspin years before Amazon became a big thing.
I didn’t realize until recently that K-mart was still around anywhere. Here in Dallas they closed all the stores a long time ago, maybe 1990 or early 90s.
We still have a couple of Sears nearby - I don’t see how they keep the lights on.
“They’ve” done nothing of the sort. Sunday deliveries are contracted out. I have had two items delivered on Sunday, and both times, I also received items meant for other people in my townhouse block (same street address, but different unit number), which would not have happened with my regular mail deliverers.
At its peak, Kmart had over 2100 stores (in 2000). By the end of last year, they were down to 432. Sears Holdings has regularly announced closings in both chains; the most recent announcement (in January) was for the closure of 39 Sears and 64 Kmarts.
Here’s the press release for their 4Q 2017 earnings (released a couple of weeks ago). They tout an earnings growth in Q4 (versus the prior year), though this was due to a tax windfall from the new US tax law, and an accounting change in how they were valuing the Sears brand name. Actual in-store sales were down tremendously, and not just due to having fewer stores in 2017 than in 2016: same-store sales were down 12.2% for Kmart, and 15.2% for Sears. Obviously, that’s a horrible, non-sustainable business trend.
An anecdote: I was visiting my parents in Green Bay for Thanksgiving in 2016; on Black Friday, my father asked me if I’d help him fix some issues that they were having with their TV / cable setup. I discovered that they needed a couple of new cables and such; my father insisted that we should go to Sears to find the parts (probably since that was where they had bought the TV). We walked into Sears, at 11 a.m. on Black Friday, and it was a ghost town. And, predictably, they didn’t have the needed cables.
I ordered four books to be sent to a friend’s address. It got split into two deliveries, no problem, that happens. One was made fine, the other could not be delivered?! I hate to get worried as the OP did in his other thread about amazon deliveries, but this left me concerned.
It’ll last for as long as the board members are able to put money in their pockets. While I’m sure they’d rather be doing better, why close shop if you’re still putting [does some quick research] 1-3 million in your pocket?
I’m not sure how often you order, but I get at least one of my deliveries on a Sunday each month.
I’m surprised there’s not a way to opt out of that (on an order by order basis). More often than not I’d prefer if they pushed it off to Monday. But in any case, I’m not sure why you think they don’t have Sunday delivery. They most certainly do. It usually happens (at least for me), if you order on a Thursday.
I’ve suspected for several years that Eddie Lampert (Sears Holdings CEO) is dragging out the inevitable for as long as he can, gradually but inexorably selling off anything that can bring in cash, in order to wring every drop of value out of the chains, and into the pockets of the board and the investors.
I’m not sure it makes sense then either. What I said was " keep in mind that the USPS was considering not delivering Saturdays any more in order to save money. With Amazon, they’ve added Sunday to their delivery schedule".
I don’t recall, but could be wrong, USPS delivering on Sunday before Amazon. Even now, I don’t think they deliver anything but Amazon on Sunday. As for possibly getting rid of Saturday deliveries, they floated that idea in 2013.
In the grand scheme of things, it’s not a terrible idea. Siphon out what money you can and close up.
The USPS delivers Express Mail (now officially known as “Priority Express Mail” which is not the same thing as “Priority Mail”) and Amazon on Sundays. During December for the last few years, they have also delivered some or all parcels (of all classes) on Sunday. They have delivered Express Mail on Sunday since the inception of the service. Part of the reasoning behind the Amazon Sunday delivery deal is that they had to keep facilities open on Sunday anyway, so they might as well use them to the maximum capacity. The Amazon load has exploded far beyond just soaking up the idle resources.
The most recent union contract allowed the USPS to hire a new class of worker called a “City Carrier Associate” or CCA that gets paid a third to half of what a regular carrier gets paid. The USPS has been working them to death. They do most of the Sunday deliveries. If anyone doesn’t believe that the USPS delivers on Sundays, check out some of the postal worker chat forums.
More and more of my packages in the last couple of years have been being delivered by Amazon Logistics (AMZL). I can’t figure out any rhyme or reason behind when they choose AMZL. I’ll be getting two similar sized Amazon packages on the same day coming from the same origin and one of them will be AMZL and the other USPS.
I’m always confused by that. It seems like Kmart has been having a perpetual ‘going out of business’ sale for the last 15 years.
We still get catalogs, it seems like monthly (and big ones too) from Hubert and ULine. Every time I get them I think of Cliff Clavin complaining about the day he had to deliver both the Spiegel’s and Sears catalogs. As for the actual cost, I have no idea though.
All this talk of cost could make an interesting thread in and of itself if anyone here works for the post office or a business that would be sending out mass/bulk mail and has some real numbers to work with.
As I reread the thread to catch up, I thought about that. I just went to USPS and priced it out. The only delivery option that have that would end up with a Sunday delivery is Priority Mail Express (as you said), but the cost is 3-4 times more than the next class down (Priority Mail). For example, a 10# box send from Milwaukee to LA is priced at between $7 and $35 depending on which method you choose but $90 for Priority Mail Express. Even a regular envelope jumps from $7 for Priority to over $30 for Express.
Priority Mail Express is the service that USPS used to call Express Mail; they created it, years ago, as a next-day (usually) delivery service, to compete against FedEx and UPS in that segment. So, the reason that it’s so expensive is that you’re paying a premium for next-day, as opposed to two-day delivery (regular Priority Mail); as a side-effect of that next-day service, they’re also offering Sunday delivery, apparently.
No Amazon didn’t get their USPS deal unfairly. Yes, it’s a bad deal, and that is Congress’s fault. Let me explain.
Amazon put out a perfectly cromulent RFP to compete their delivery deals among the available services. FedEx, UPS, USPS, DHL, and a bunch of much smaller groups all had their shot. USPS made decisions about how to bid and what services to include. They gave the lowest prices in a variety of service types and geographic regions and so they won the work.
I have worked extensively with the contracts department at USPS and can state unequivocally that there are a very few highly competent employees all of whom are much too busy to take on the larger Contracts. The internal reporting and statistics necessary to put together a truly competent and definitely profitable bid are simply non-existent. So they would have brought in contractors to run the capture and put together the bid. (Full disclosure: I have no independent knowledge of this particular bid, only “how things work” at USPS HQ.) Those contractors would have been pressured to win at any cost, as the entire management chain was convinced that the Amazon account would make or break them.
So, in a complete vacuum of technical information, a bid was created. Terms and conditions were then negotiated by a group of people who, in their daily work, are allowed only to provide set boilerplate materials and impose the standard conditions upon their business partners, even when those conditions are obviously unfavorable to anyone who bothers to read them. The only way to get an exception approved is to go through four levels of management, none of whom have the kind of in-depth knowledge required to consider the question. Furthermore, the Contracting Officer who puts together the deal will not be allowed to participate in the meetings considering the question. A manager who has been completely uninvolved will brief his manager, who will brief the next level. Each of whom will either 1)make nonsensical recommendations based upon their misinterpretation of the business scenario, or 2) wordsmith the documents until they are down to a fourth-grade reading level and no longer represent the required terms and conditions.
It’s truly one of the sickest Contracts shops I’ve ever experienced.
So why is this Congress’s fault, you ask? Because the USPS is limited by the GSA contract negotiations. If they were truly allowed to run themselves as a business, then they’d be able to pay the salaries required to hire competent contracting officers. As it is, they have all of the limitations of regular Federal employers with none of the benefits. (The job security, benefits, etc. can not begin to match those of the Federal agencies with whom they have to compete.) From the point of view of employment competition, the only thing they have going for them is the one thing their idiotic management thinks is the problem: A fully funded retirement health benefit. There is no other reason to choose them over another area employer.
Unfortunately internet shopping is the wave of the future. I definitely support my local stores when I can. I feel sorry for Barnes and Noble. I don’t feel the least but sorry for K-Mart.
I hate Barnes and Noble. I absolutely hate that I can find a book I want, drive all the way out there and find out the price in the store is well more than the price on the internet. When asked, they won’t match the web price, they’ll say “you can order it and get that price and if you pick it up here shipping is free”. When they’ve said that to me I’ve replied that I can get it on Amazon, for less, and have it shipped to my house, for free and get it sooner.
They won’t even let me order it online and just take the one sitting there on the shelf.
The last time that happened was the last time I set foot in B&N on any kind of a regular basis. I might have been there one or two times a month whereas now I’m there maybe once a year.
I understand they might have more overhead that Amazon, but not matching the price posted on the internet (or just having them the same to begin with) is a huge pet peeve of mine.
I walked out of one of the national/major pet stores for the same reason. Aquarium Pump was something like $99 online but $130 in the store. They wouldn’t match it so I got it on Amazon.