Sears had to sell the Craftsman name to keep the lights on.I think they closed some K-Marts here before that list was made.
I saw the writing on the wall for Sears when Ace Hardware started using the Craftsman name.
Also:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-sears-sells-craftsman-stanley-20170105-story.html
I saw the writing on the wall for Sears when Ace Hardware started using the Craftsman name.
Sears had to sell the Craftsman name to keep the lights on.
When Sears moved hand-tool manufacturing from Emerson in Pittsburgh to China, processing lifetime warranty claims cost them more than the savings. Shortly after that, the sales declined - appliance sales declined (Kenmore) and now they are ready to fall off the face of the earth.
A former Emerson employee here in Pittsburgh showed me the difference between the Chinese made products and the older Emerson made sockets, wrenches, screwdrivers. The plating is terrible and irregular and so thick in some places that the socket didn't fit a standard 1/4" nut. Screwdrivers not fitting screws.
He was just sick about MBAs making decisions in cost without understanding the desires/needs of their customers and not setting any quality specifications and now the customers are unhappy, the company (sears) is going downhill (almost dead) and 700 people in Norther Pittsburgh suburbs were put out on the street for a while (most are now working at Mitsubishi Electric, Emerson Electric, and Siemens). Ultimately, no cost savings, no market share increase and no Sears.
Last item first, the USPS was never intended to be a money making operation; it was intended to facilitate commerce. It was created as part of the Constitution along with authority of the Federal Government to create roadways. There are other federal laws that prohibit the government from offering goods or services that would compete with existing companies. That combination made it difficult for the US post office was late to the dance and prevented from competing in the email space by threats of lawsuits by yahoo and others in the mid-1990s as some people in congress started suggesting the USPS offer the service.I was thinking about this the other day. It has come up repeatedly in threads, especially about the once mighty Shack.
First, I appreciate how difficult it must be to change when you are successful - think about that...what you do works and works for a very long time (ridiculously long in the case of Sears). Then, it stops working well and you have to change...and that does not seem to end well.
The Mall as we know it has changed. Then again, it used to be a Shopping Center and not a Mall and many made that transition. Moreover, urban areas are changing ahead of rural areas with regard to malls (in my opinion).
We buy much more online. But people still go to malls and for certain things and not others (remember when any large mall had at least two bookstores?). Every time I go to a mall (which is less and less frequently) I note where the people are....food court (the true predictor of mall health. Then there are the athletic shoe stores, regular shoe stores, some level of clothing stores, sunglasses stores and a few others.
Now, why have the failing department stores not zeroed in on those area....why not have fast food in the stores (they used to have cafeterias) and specialize on those items that are still popular. Instead, they are weakening in those specialty areas.
They were also way late with online shopping - now they also have to make their products also available on Amazon and the like, in addition to their own online shopping.
They don't seem to want to do any of this and I think it makes sense if they want to survive. I also thought the USPS could have become the iconic email provider.
Then again, maybe this is why I don't own any stores or malls or Post Offices
I've seen OMB Circular A-76 that suggests the Federal Government doesn't compete with private industry. I haven't seen any law.There are other federal laws that prohibit the government from offering goods or services that would compete with existing companies.
While not involving retail goods, your story is reminiscent of the wire & cable factory I worked in. Most of the machines in that plant were dinosaurs. They were old, but very well designed and very well maintained. My predecessors in the maintenance department had put together a rock-solid maintenance plan and carved out a respectable portion of the plant, gated off, which stored all the spare parts. The majority of the machines came from Europe; primarily Germany and Austria, and a few French machines too. The parts for these machines were very hard to source, had unfathomable lead times, and were very costly.They stocked lots of parts that seldom sold but when someone wanted that part, they had it and could come pick it up. They had quite a few parts that they only sold every few years. One example I can think of was some gaskets [...] eventually, the owner turned the business over to his two kids whom he had sent to business school and one of the first things they did was analyze the inventory costs and show how much money they were losing by stocking parts that didn't sell some minimum amount each month. Yes, having those gaskets sitting there for a few years probably tied up a hundred bucks in inventory that could have been being used for something else plus exposed them to a small inventory tax that Denver had (probably still has). Those were hard numbers that their MBA programs taught them how to crunch. But they didn't even attempt to consider [...] how much business they stood to lose if they stopped stocking them. Those weren't things that you could easily put numbers to, and so they were just ignored. Similarly, they showed how having an in-stock rate of over 95% was WAY to high and that the optimal in-stock rate was much lower (something like 70%, if I recall). So they forced changes to the inventory levels that they had just "proven" would make the business so much more profitable and were at a complete loss to explain why, in less than a year, the company's parts business had declined by almost half as customers found other 'first-shop' sources, some of which were in neighboring states.
Well the original tools were made with high quality case hardened steel but the Chinese tools are made using case hardened peanut butter so the quality suffers.A former Emerson employee here in Pittsburgh showed me the difference between the Chinese made products and the older Emerson made sockets, wrenches, screwdrivers. The plating is terrible and irregular and so thick in some places that the socket didn't fit a standard 1/4" nut. Screwdrivers not fitting screws.
That's perhaps the most extreme story of this type I've ever heard, but I'd be willing to bet it isn't even close to the most extreme story out there!In comes this cancer born out of a university "think tank."
Great story has me recalling similar incidents. As a footnote:A couple years later the remaining fleet of T-33's was sold to Mexico, along with all spare parts. But, once again, we couldn't get these master cylinders onto the manifests and the C-130 loadmasters were unwilling to let us just put them on anyway. So most of those T-33'smade the trip to their new homes with about half a dozen brake master cylinders strapped down to the rear seat. We told the guy in charge of taking possession of the fleet the tale and suggested that he, too, report them as FOB ("Found on Bird") once they got to Mexico.
Considering its birth and evolution the little airplane had a long career of service.The last operator of the T-33, the Bolivian Air Force, retired the type in July 2017, after 44 years of service.
Unfortunately that miseducation that all items not often used that are sitting on some shelf that serves no real purpose to anything else anymore in some building that has long since paid for itself is still a constant financial cost (when it's actually not) is what killed a huge amount of other wise good businesses over the years.But, eventually, the owner turned the business over to his two kids whom he had sent to business school and one of the first things they did was analyze the inventory costs and show how much money they were losing by stocking parts that didn't sell some minimum amount each month. Yes, having those gaskets sitting there for a few years probably tied up a hundred bucks in inventory that could have been being used for something else plus exposed them to a small inventory tax that Denver had (probably still has). Those were hard numbers that their MBA programs taught them how to crunch. But they didn't even attempt to consider how much the effective advertising value of having those gaskets on hand was or how much business they stood to lose if they stopped stocking them. Those weren't things that you could easily put numbers to, and so they were just ignored. Similarly, they showed how having an in-stock rate of over 95% was WAY to high and that the optimal in-stock rate was much lower (something like 70%, if I recall). So they forced changes to the inventory levels that they had just "proven" would make the business so much more profitable and were at a complete loss to explain why, in less than a year, the company's parts business had declined by almost half as customers found other 'first-shop' sources, some of which were in neighboring states. The company effectively folded a few years later.
Because the business gets to write off the $100k in inventory as a loss if they discard the old inventory. Now, if you made $100k in profit off of new, active inventory and had to pay ~25% as taxes, I bet most people would decide to toss $100k 8n old inventory that they don't think they would ever sell in order to reduce that tax bill to zero. The additional saving would be that they wouldn't have to build another $10k worth of storage.Then there's the cost analysis of actual storage space. Why throw out $100K in new old stock items to make space for $100K worth of new stuff when $10K will buy more than enough new storage space to hold the new $100K worth of stock and then some?
I have to disagree with that. It may have been that way around 5 to 10 years ago, but not now. At least not from places like Harbor Freight. Their hand and power tools are of every bit of the same quality as the old Craftsman tools, some even better. And for stuff like sockets they have the same replacement guarantee. Don't know about other places quality though.Well the original tools were made with high quality case hardened steel but the Chinese tools are made using case hardened peanut butter so the quality suffers.
Ron