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As Sears reports a $580M Q4 loss, the company chairman Eddie Lampert has a message for retailers everywhere: We’re all screwed. While the year prior wasn't great (losing "just" $159M), it wasn't as catastrophic for the struggling retailer.
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It’s not that Lampert hasn’t been trying: He’s engineered massive initiatives, including spinning off its best real estate, while investing heavily in online and rewards programs, Bloomberg reports.
It just hasn’t been working. In a recent letter to shareholders, Lampert said consumer spending has experienced “tectonic shifts” that have hurt retailers “previously proven to be relatively immune to such shifts.”
And if we're to believe Lampert, this shift (guess "seismic" was too tame) will be too tectonic for the industry to withstand. [Bloomberg]
