Thread regarding Sears layoffs

@1kfm

Best buy has really flourished on hits competition trying to relate to what consumers want. I see they have invested in high electronic items. Not only that one of the biggest wins was when they entered the wireless business big win where Sears didn't even consider touching that profitable area and till this date they didn't consider. Along with their overprice accessories people still buy stuff their is one of the reasons they are surviving.

scs- The reason BB can pull it off is that they sell a variety of electronics from items that have hardly any mark-up to those items that have huge mark ups. The items with little mark up pay most of the bills and the huge mark up items make the profit. Just like McDonalds making very little on soft drinks and fries but the volume of sales pays the bills.

Sears/Kmart do not have the space to dedicate to the amount of inventory it would take to make the square footage profitable. They would need not only floor space for cell phones, head phones, accessories, T.V's, sterios, speakers, computers, software, game systems, games etc. You have to have the volume of people coming into the store just for those products to make it worth the floor space to sell them.

That is why you will change counter details all the time during certain seasons. People will come in for those seasonal items even though many of them have a small markup

Have not received any shipments of tv at warehouse in months.

That makes no sense. First you say there's no profit and dedicating floor space makes no sense, then you say BB can do it because they dedicate all the floor space.

Sears could have been Best Buy but didn't bother trying when it was the right time. Now its too late.

Years ago I bought my first VCR at Sears.

More recently I bought a ton of Samsung tablets. I assumed sears had some kind of in with them because combined with sywr they were a steal, but it seems like the Samsung and Amazon stuff is even gone now. Sad really.

These days electronics are dirt cheap and there is no profit margin in them. That is why today most people will just throw and old TV out and get a new one instead of getting it repaired. Years ago electronics were expensive and you could make a living off of selling and repairing them.

From a retail view it makes no sense to devote floor space to something that will not make the square footage up in sales. Best Buy can do this because every square foot in the store is dedicated to electronics with some with small profit margins and some with high profit margins.

Welcome to the 21st century.

Just remember those people you refuse to help won't ever be back. Ever. Their next dishwasher will come from Best Buy too.

The last day for the part-timers (who were hourly workers) in our store's electronics department was this past Saturday. They have now handed off responsibility for the department to HA, which is a joke. We work on commission only and we will avoid like the plague anybody trying to tie us up with endless questions about electronics accessories or the merits of 4K vs HD vs UHD blah blah blah. Or god forbid someone wants us to guide them through a Consumer Cellular sale and setup. If a customer walks up and says "I want this TV" I will gladly sell it to them for the lousy 1% commission, otherwise sorry I am busy trying to compete with the other sales people on the appliance floor for the paltry business that wanders in.

Anyone who thinks Sears has had a decent electronics department in the last decade is seriously out of touch. Even 10 years ago, the selection was terrible, items were overpriced and for the most part things were outdated. Can't comment on KMart--been at least 10 years since I was in one.

I still remember many years ago when electronics was staffed with suit and tie full time associates and they could make a comfortable living from it....The dept is a shell of its former self in our store now.selling a couple to few hundred dollars a day now if that much......Stockrooms that used to be full of Tv's and cameras...now empty.

Having the department still draws in customers until they realize how bad it is.

I'm surprised my Kmart still has an electronics section myself. Though it is slowly starting to shrink more and more.

The department is officially dead with the very rare exception of a handful of sears and Kmart store. Do we still sell kenmore tvs?