" Cabela's family is the reason you had a job in Sidney in the first place. They would be the last people I would point a finger at. I'm not sure they ever foresaw what could take place with their company and how people like Tommy and the board have a different view on how a company should be ran."
At this point I'm sure many people would have preferred just not getting a job in Sidney in the first place.
The issue wasn't the Cabela's taking the company public, it's how it was run for the last several years. Back in 2008/9 when the recession hit, and we were only opening 1 store a year, we had the perfect opportunity to refine a lot of our processes that contributed to the downfall of the company. Our markdown process was a joke and originated with confusion in corporate that filtered down to our stores. Space planning couldn't figure out how many racks were in each store to merchandise, which led to inventory being overbought and sitting almost every season. Which then led to the constant back and forth between hitting sales plan, or hitting margin plan. It changed every week with the Internet being used to take pricing up and down to try and balance things out. But instead of taking the slower approach and refining these relatively easy things, we kept building more and more stores. Which just compounded all the problems that were never fixed previously.
So no, going public was not the problem. In my opinion it was the total lack of any competent leadership.
Cabela's family is the reason you had a job in Sidney in the first place. They would be the last people I would point a finger at. I'm not sure they ever foresaw what could take place with their company and how people like Tommy and the board have a different view on how a company should be ran.
Clueless