K-Mart and online shoppng

[mariness]

Business Week has an interesting article explaining the internal business philosophy of K-Mart/Sears and how this has not been great for the company.

To be fair, though, I don't think that's a complete explanation for the demise of the local K-Mart, currently in the last sad dregs of its closing sale. This surprised no one; the main question was how the hell it had stayed open this long, given the proximity of rival Wal-mart and Target, the general dinginess and overall aura of depression that lingered over the store, the non-existent customer service, the road construction that made it difficult to get to for a couple years, and the sad truth that more than once I went in to get something (I use a trike, so going to Target or Wal-mart is not always an option for me, especially in the summer) only to find out that the cash registers wouldn't let me purchase it. (Seriously.) I popped by, thinking I might try to get a dutch oven or a microwave; neither are exactly necessities at this point, but I don't have a dutch oven (I have a pyrex casserole dish) and my microwave is disintegrating into its last days. So I figured I'd stop by.

A few sad scattered shoppers were wandering listlessly around, mostly in the clothing section. A few were looking at the jewelry section, questioning why a pair of 1/2 carat diamond earrings in 10 kt gold with low quality diamonds still cost $599. It was a valid question, and the K-Mart person shrugged. Over to the last of the housing goods, which still had about twenty dutch ovens left. It did not take me long to figure out why: someone else in that aisle had out a smart phone and was comparing the firesale prices to current online prices at Target and Wal-mart. At 40%, with half the store empty, K-Mart's dutch ovens were still more expensive than Wal-mart's and were only slightly under Target's.

Dutch ovens are probably not something the average shopper spent time doing price comparisons before pre-internet. Unless you're buying the Williams-Somona type, they're not that expensive. They also aren't a must-have item, though, and they aren't something you have to buy frequently, or at that very moment. So it only makes sense that with a cell phone, people would check prices before purchasing.

And that, in the end, was the other thing that doomed K-Mart: the prices were never that good. It didn't help that the Goodwill right next door was brighter and cleaner and had better quality clothing. For people like me and others in the immediate surrounding area, the convenience was probably worth it (well, it was worth it for me). But that wasn't enough to keep things going, and when you add in a dingy, unpleasant shopping experience, and the ability to check prices instantly on a small device in your hand, that was it for the store, especially with a problematic corporate structure that called for change, but had no way to deliver it.

Comments

[trouble]

That's how Zellers was. It was so physically depressing to be in. :(

[brigid]

Well, that explains pretty much every trip to K-Mart or Sears I've had in a while.

[mariness]

I haven't been to Sears for at least a year -- for refrigerator pricing. As it turned out, their prices were less than excellent. Sears looked a lot better than K-Mart -- it wasn't dingy -- but it had almost no shoppers and no staff. That said, that particular Sears is in a mall that is almost dead for reasons completely unrelated to Sears or anything mentioned in the Business Week article. (To put it in context, a Starbucks and a McDonald's in that mall had to close for lack of business, and they were next to the only place that does still attract customers and is pretty much keeping the mall alive, the AMC movie theatre.)

[brigid]

In the past 4 years we've gone to Sears looking for:

A window AC unit (for some reason they had display models but no AC units in stock at all anywhere at any store)

Kid shoes

Adult men shoes

Adult women shoes

Men's clothing

A vacuum

A Fancy Plus Size Dress

a specific toy I forget what

and we walked out empty handed each freaking time. It was incredibly difficult to flag down assistance (they were really understaffed), hard to find the products, they were out of a lot of stuff... just ugh. And the prices aren't competitive. I've also heard some real horror stories about people buying products from Sears and having them, say, refuse to deliver stuff people had paid to deliver, refuse to fix stuff under warranty, bad customer service all around.

Once I bought a bunch of clothing at Sears, got home, found it was ALL still security tagged. Every article. So I had to go BACK TO SEARS and convince them to take off all the security tags, and there was no security tag remover at the check out, so they had to track one down, and it turns out they used more than one type of security tags so they had to get multiple security tag removers, blah blah blah, it took half a freaking hour just to get my previously paid for merchandise untagged.

Ugh.

Unrelated, but do you read "Weird Tales"? I'm really disappointed in the current issue for a number of reasons but can't tell if I'm just being overly picky/negative or not.

[mariness]

A good decade ago, Sears used to have a decent collection of petite dresses that I could wear to work when a full business suit wasn't required, although I usually found nicer dresses at Dress Barn. But they'd fall apart, so I would just stick to Dress Barn for the regular work dresses and Petite Sophisticate or Macy's for the business suits.

Sears as I recall always had a terrible shoe collection, so I'm not at all surprised you couldn't find shoes there. And I wear 6 1/2, so really, finding shoes should not be that difficult, much though I hate shoe shopping.

I haven't read any of Weird Tales since they switched editors.

(frozen) (no subject)

[mariness]

And unless that depressing store offers SOMETHING, you won't return. In my case, it offered a nearby location, but if I could drive, I would never have gone back into it.

[untonuggan]

On a somewhat related note, I still think Borders started going downhill when they stopped cleaning their bathrooms (like, ever).

This was interesting, thanks for posting!

(Also, YAY TRIKES).

[mariness]

I suspect that the bathroom cleaning was more a symptom than a cause; if you run out of money, you stop paying for janitorial services, and workers hired to sell books/coffee usually are not excited about bathroom cleaning, and if they are worried about their jobs anyway, they probably aren't going to be doing much of a job there.

I will say the local Borders had clean bathrooms right up until the end -- even on the last day/hour (when I went in for a book rescue) the bathrooms were still clean. Borders had numerous other issues, alas :(