Word: kmart
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Layaway programs--plans with roots in the Great Depression--are back at Sears, Kmart and TJ Maxx. Merchandise stays at the store as people pay it off little by little, interest-free. No credit card required. Tired of dry-cleaning bills? Ann Taylor Loft promotes the fact that most of its clothes are now washable. And if you suffer buyer's remorse, more than half of retailers say their holiday return policies will be more lenient than usual, up from 35% who said so last year, according to NRF's return-fraud survey...
...Mart's ardent, union-backed critics such as Wal-Mart Watch and Wake Up Wal-Mart, these improvements are just crumbs from the corporate table. Wal-Mart's national hourly-wage average of $10.74 is more or less competitive with Target or Kmart, but its total package still lags behind union competitors in the supermarket industry...
...before Sears there was the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co., the A&P, an urban power that once ran nearly 16,000 U.S. stores. Competitors quaked before it. This is the history of retailing. It says that every company that has reached No. 1, from Woolworth's to Kmart, has eventually spit the bit, unable to cope with market shifts. Wal-Mart is a far superior operator to any of those has-beens--it will produce $20 billion in operating income this year. But being king is an awfully heavy weight to bear, and Wal-Mart is feeling the strain...
...owns Macy's, swallowed up the more moderate May Department Stores. Macy's, having replaced with its own marquee some famous regional department-store names--Marshall Field's, Famous-Barr, Kaufmann's, Filene's--experienced a strong 8.5% increase in same-store sales for November. Sears, which combined with Kmart in 2004, is still struggling. And Wal-Mart, in the throes of a mammoth, disruptive restructuring, reported a dismal 0.1% drop in sales...
...also because the company joins, under one roof, hedge funds and private equity, the practice of buying and running companies. It's yet another sign that lines are blurring and hedgies are no longer the loners of the investment world. Eddie Lampert used his hedge fund to take over Kmart and Sears, then funneled the stores' cash flow into derivatives trades--which last quarter made $101 million, half the company's net income. Nelson Peltz used his to storm onto the board of H.J. Heinz. "By many different definitions," says William Goetzmann, professor of finance at Yale School of Management...