An interesting article about the split between Whirlpool and Sears. Seems each party had their reasons to call it quits.
https://www.thestreet.com/story/14357573/1/sears-says-it-wont-carry-whirlpool-anymore.html
14 replies (most recent on top)
Sears market performance:
10 years -96%
5 years -92%
1 year -50%
Whirlpool market performance:
10 years +96%
5 years +72%
1 year +10%
What I find shocking is the remain good appliance brands (Bosch and Electrolux) haven't dumped Sears.
Given the current events it’s obvious SHLD dumper WHR. So why continue this debate? 3% of whirlpools profit is more like it.
Any of you who work in appliance know how lousy a product whirlpool has been. Every customer I see just wants the “smart” appliances anyway.
Check the charts, Whirlpool was at $200 a share when the amazon deal was announced, cut their stock price by 10%, now the next sears announcement cut them another ten. Whirlpool got burned bad.
The answer is that Whirlpool wanted more money up front. Sears didn’t want to do that. Whirlpool said ok bye then. Sears amounts to a whopping 3% of their total sales so they really weren’t inclined to negotiate.
I don’t think there will ever be a definitive answer. It’s fun to speculate and assume this or that, but unless we’re the actual people involved with the Sears/Whirlpool split. We’ll never truly know.
Who dumped who is irrelevant now. The bottom line is that Whrilpool will survive just fine without Sears. Where as Sears has now lost another big vendor that exposed them in not paying their vendors nor having much of a future left.
Both stocks took a hit but Whrilpool is still trading in the triple digital range. Where as Sears, their stock keeps taking a bad hit and never really recovers from it.
Whatever the truth is between the two, Sears is once again comes out as the loser.
@sqa - They sure did. Look at what happened to that unfortunate tool vendor who wanted to stop supplying Sears, Eddie sued them to prevent that from happening! Since Eddie claimed he dumped Whirlpool (wink, wink), then Whirlpool should be safe from litigious Eddie. In other words, Whirlpool played Eddie like a cheap violin.
whirlpool gt screwed in Canada by Eddie. no mas
Whirlpool played very shrewd ensuring Sears had to make the announcement that they were breaking the relationship.
@yyv I think Sears needed Whirlpool more their is competition out their. Say maybe Whirlpool can work a deal with Amazon or any other retailer. The thing I see here is when a company pulls out more start following. Sears is in the shaky position sales have not grown with Sears also the debt is just accumulating a company can just take so much and at this point its getting to the point companies will realize that they are at a gamble as of now. Stores keep closing so how do vendors get paid if the company isnt profitable.
Why does it matter at this point?
The real question is who is the split going to affect more? Sears losing the customer business or Whirlpool losing the business with Sears?
Eddie is proud & hard headed & said in a town meeting that he didn't like how some suppliers were treating SHC & that he wasn't going to stand for it.
Whirlpool wouldn't have wanted to lose the contract with SHC if it was going to be bad for business. Or maybe they're hard headed too?
I guess at this point who cares right? It is what it is.
Yes this was all known in the summer. Ann Hand let it slip at the roadshow that Sears was fighting with Whirlpool which is why they didn't attend. Whirlpool knew back then that they were done as soon as the contract was up. That's also why the commission structure on Whirlpool was lowered so CSA would steer away from selling the product long before the contract expired. It also will make the sales drop less noticeable since CSA made next to nothing on that brand after the change.
Given the current events it would make the most sense that whirlpool dumped sears. There's an article with that says whirlpool were discussing leaving back in may or June. Who knows really.