Posted on 08/22/2013 5:03:51 AM PDT by xzins
Sears’ second-quarter loss widened as the number of stores in operation declined and it dealt with lingering effects from its spinoff of the Hometown and Outlet brand.
A series of retailers including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Macy’s Inc. have reported disappointing quarterly results this month and have issued bleaker outlooks as shoppers grapple with an uncertain economy. Americans absorbed a 2 percentage-point increase in the Social Security payroll tax this year as well. That means take-home pay for a household earning $50,000 a year has been sliced by $1,000.
Hedge fund billionaire Edward Lampert, who controls the company and took over as CEO at the start of the year, has been pushing hard to compete with online retailers like Amazon.com, and that was one bright spot for the company this quarter.
Online sales rose 20 percent at sears.com and kmart.com.
Still, losses are growing and in trading before the opening bell, company shares fell 4 percent.
For the period ended Aug. 3, Sears Holdings Corp. lost $194 million, or $1.83 per share.
Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores Inc. shares began trading publicly last October. The company mostly sells home appliances, hardware, tools and lawn and garden equipment. Sears said Thursday that revenue from Hometown and Outlet was about $450 million in the second quarter, down from revenue of approximately $645 million a year earlier.
Sears’ middle-income shoppers have been hit hard by a slowly recovering economy, but critics have long said the company hasn’t done enough to invest in its stores to compete with Wal-Mart, Target Corp. and others.
The company is also focusing on a loyalty program, called “Shop Your Way.” Sears said members of the program made up more than 65 percent of revenue at its U.S. Sears and Kmart locations
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
And if retailers are struggling over a 2% increase in SS taxes, then wait 'til the economy sees the result of ObamaCare taxes.
K-Mart has started advertising toward the ghetto-gang banger-rapper crowd. Sounds like a winning strategy to me in white middle class America, which comprise the vast bulk of its customers.
Why don’t they just advertise a ‘Flash-mob’ section and a ‘white-cracka’ section?
Or they can just close down now and save some of the seed money they haven’t spent yet.
That rap video commercial doesn’t help. Didn’t interest me or my kids.
I stopped shopping at Macy’s when their store policy allowed transgenders to change in the women’s dressing rooms.
I agree. What a crock.
Some high school boys on a “boring” day decide they’re transgender just to get in the ladies’ dressing rooms.
This culture is insane.
Not only rap crap/hip hop ads, but ads with grade school kids on the school bus raping with the in your face talk to the hands stuff. And not to mention K marts rap fashions for the kids.
And they wonder why these kids aren’t graduating or able to speak in reasonable English.
SEARS and other catalog stores could’ve been Amazon - but were not.
Dino-retailers in the digital tar pit.
I have Sears MC and Sears store card. Few days ago I got two letters from Sears indicating that for luck of activity on both cards for the past 3 years my credit limit on Sears mastercard will be reduced and Sears store card will be closed. I have multiple store and credit cards with a zero balance and no activity but this is a first time that I get something like this. Well..
I guess they’re shipping their pants now
:>)
K-Mart has really become a trashy, disorganized place to shop.
Sears except for tools has over priced and out dated items.
This is only going to get worse, especially when obamaCare hits.
K-Mart has always been seen as a cheap place (not just inexpensive.)
Sears has always been seen as a quality place, and for much of its history was seen as a low cost, middle-class store.
I had hoped when they bought K-Mart that they would just shuck the K-Mart name, change it to Sears, and get out of the big malls.
Mall shopping is a pain, and Wal-Mart shopping, like grocery shopping, in easy. Everything’s under one roof, there are carts to put way too much stuff into, and there are multiple checkout lines.
Mall stores are scattered all over, the carts, if they have them are hidden and restricted to their own store, and the checkouts are few and far between.
They do everything in their power to make mall shopping a pain in the butt.
Heck, a few years ago, I got a letter from Sears telling me that the interest rate on my zero balance account was being raised from 7% to 25% following a “periodic review.” No reason given. I cut up the card and sent it back to them in pieces.
Agreed.
I want to drive to the store I want to shop out, not walk 1/4 mile lugging stuff.
About the only time I go to a mall these days is at Christmas, the hustle and bustle is fun and the kids like the decorations.
Oh, you are correct about Sears buying K-Mart, I really thought they were going to improve the store.
“...I had hoped when they (Sears) bought K-Mart...”
-
It was the other way round.
-
November 17, 2004
By Parija Bhatnagar, CNN/Money staff writer
“Kmart is buying Sears, Roebuck & Co. for $11 billion in a deal
that will marry two of the nation’s oldest retailers that had trouble
keeping up with the changes in American culture around them.
The deal, announced Wednesday morning, will create the third-largest
retailer in the country. The new company, known as Sears Holdings,
will be based at Sears headquarters outside Chicago.”
There so many idiotic policies by the big corporations that sometimes I’m amazed. Instead of giving some incentives to use their cards, companies make “smart” decisions and in the end punish themselves :-)
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