Word: marts
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...widowed neighbor of his mother's. He wore one every day. The women at his job-training program nicknamed him GQ. He grew a neat beard to look less threatening. He had interviews with every kind of business from messenger services to department stores including Macy's and K Mart but received not a single viable offer. The kinds of jobs he was most likely to get he couldn't take. Because of an old neck injury, he can't do heavy manual labor--a common problem among former inmates, who, because of their intimate history with violence and needles...
...Mart has long used ad circulars touting hot specials and loss leaders to draw crowds. This approach used to work well, but promotional retailing is inherently inefficient--merchandise courses through the distribution system in massive waves. Pick the wrong products or suffer a supplier hiccup, and you are suddenly up to your ears in toasters and out of detergent. Despite improvements, K Mart is able to keep its goods fully stocked on shelves only 86% of the time. Anything less than 90% is considered unacceptable. Wal-Mart runs close to 100%. Wal-Mart and others have emphasized "everyday low price...
...Mart is trying to wean itself from the weekly circulars, but in the third quarter the company cut back too fast. Some shoppers love those ads, and when the flyers didn't arrive at customers' doors, customers didn't show up at K Mart's stores. At the same time, K Mart cut prices on 38,000 items. Consumers didn't catch on fast enough, but Wal-Mart sure did, and it fired back with a vengeance. "Look at what this CEO has done!" says analyst Hale. "He's tried to go up against Wal-Mart by lowering prices...
Also in the third quarter K Mart's inventories swelled by 5.6% as sales fell. Hood estimates that for each 1% increase in inventory this year, K Mart's cash flow will drop some $40 million. That's money the company needs to continue its program to remodel old stores and build new Super K supermarket-discount stores. If K Mart had been as efficient in selling as Wal-Mart, it could have earned $200 million in the third quarter instead of losing $224 million...
Meanwhile, Wal-Mart is looking for other markets to conquer. It would like to offer low-cost checking and savings accounts and other financial services in branches, managed by a division of Canada's Toronto Dominion Bank but staffed at least partly by Wal-Mart employees. Wal-Mart figures that perhaps 20% of its customers do not have bank accounts. It is trying to work its way around U.S. banking regulations that currently forbid entities such as retailers from running banks. That's where partner TD comes in. Who knows? Maybe K Mart will apply for a loan...