When I joined this site a few days ago, I guess my assumption was that it was a site intended to be a forum where people outside of the Sears and Kmart employment rolls would be able to provide input as to what can be done to improve these former retail giants. Since reading a lot of the posts and comments, it appears there are more employees (current and former) than general public posting here. Don't get me wrong, input from employees is VITAL, but it's only one side of the story. Employees who are willing to share their opinions are valuable because most will just grumble but not speak up. However, if the plan for this site is truly to improve these companies back into major standing, then it's equally vital that there be a stronger showing of disaffected consumers. They (we) will be able to tell you why shopping at these stores has become a turn off. Only a small percentage of consumers are blindly loyal to a retailer. Most people shop for, value, service, convenience, etc.
The biggest challenge for this site (in my opinion) is how to attract more of the general population here to provide their perspectives. If this is just a forum that primarily attracts employees, then nothing will truly be resolved because part of the equation will be missing. And the spiral will continue.
I'll be honest, I've been more of a Kmart shopper (in the past) than a Sears shopper (except for Craftsman tools). I've watched Kmart go from a retail leader to a virtual has-been. It's not been something I've enjoyed watching because I grew up depending on Kmart as a major resource. Other retailers showed up in my area that were able to fill the need (Meijer, and more recently, Wal-Mart). Why was this possible? I'm not sure, but I watched Kmart blunder along (just my opinion). The Super-K and Big K experiments were poorly thought out. They appeared to be straw-grasping iniatives. In general, I think they were flops. Back then I thought Kmart would have done better if it had worked on rebuilding it's base before trying to become something it wasn't. I still think that way. Combined with Sears, one would think that these two could be major players in the retail world. Instead, I perceive that the situation is worsening. Part of it definitely has to do with the morale of the employees (it doesn't take much reading here or very many visits to the stores to figure that out). That won't likely change until management is seeing improvements on the bottom line. But for that to happen, the obvious answer is to get the consumers back into the checkout lanes. I think consumers will deal with poor morale and a less organized store if the selection and prices are decent. Kmart was never a specialty store. It was a discount retailer. Specialty lines of products probably seemed like a good idea, but I believe too much focus was placed there while the rest of the operation was virtually ignored. I could walk through a Kmart store today and show many reasons why I don't want to leave any of my dollars behind. I try to shop Kmart, but time and again I'm walking out disappointed and empty-handed.
Let me give you a few of my personal examples of what I mean. I've gone to Kmart recently to take advantage of a sale on men's cargo pants. There were plenty of pants available, but the size I needed wasn't in stock, nor was it even part of the normally stocked sizes. I didn't need anything unusual (I'm not abnormally large or tall). I went across the street to Meijer and found what I needed immediately. Another example has to do with tools. Since joining Sears, Kmart doesn't seem to offer any other tools than Craftsman. That would be fine if they offered a full selection of Craftsman, but it's limited. To get the tool I needed, I either had to drive to the nearest Sears (several miles away) or shop at a different retailer more close by. Where do you think I went? Likewise with paint. I love the Sears brand of paint (we used to have a Sears Hardware in our area). All I can find at Kmart is Martha Stewart paint. Maybe it's good paint, but I'm not interested (mainly due to the inflated price). How about footwear. I don't wear plastic shoes (man-made materials). Kmart needs to stock better quality items in this area if they want to be taken seriously. I realize these could be issues primarily with my local Kmart, but I'm not planning to drive to a different one to find out.
Hopefully I haven't ticked anyone off here. If this site continues to be primarily employee dirven, then you won't have to deal with me long. Certainly, employees need to be involved in this forum, but the general public needs to be here as well. Otherwise this will be another failure.
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