Death of the Department Store

Re:Death of the Department Store by chefandy on Wednesday September 25, 2024 @02:36AM (#41644327)

Yeah. At best, most I've been to over the past couple decades seem to have roving cashiers that went through a program about how to be irritatingly salesy and might know where a specific thing was in their department. Sears was barely better than K-Mart in its death throes after the CEO decided to embrace the Hunger Games organizational strategy.

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Re:Death of the Department Store by shiroiushi on Wednesday September 25, 2024 @03:31AM (#41644671)

As I remember it, Sears was basically gutted by its CEO, Eddie Lampert, for his own personal profit at the expense of the company.

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Re:Death of the Department Store by chefandy on Wednesday September 25, 2024 @08:50AM (#41646863)

From what I read, he theorized that internal competition was the only way to incentivize efficiency rather than being propped up by the rest of the company. Essentially, made each division compete for funding, which naturally lead to undermining and backstabbing— for example, the retail division started undercutting Kenmore with other brands— and eventually it all collapsed.

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Re:Death of the Department Store by lotsofpulp on Wednesday September 25, 2024 @05:11PM (#41651914)

Lampert failed at the personal profiting part big time:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/18/business/sears-edward-lam...

Probably one of the worst business moves in the 2000s.

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