Sears Has Seen The Future Of Retail… And It's Sears
By Anna Rose Welch, Editorial & Community Director, Advancing RNA
Company says its Shop Your Way, Integrated Retail platforms are the answers to changing retail environment
It was a difficult week last week for Sears. Coming out of 2013, the company reported another quarter of continued losses — though those losses are getting smaller as Sears lowered expenses and reduced inventory. A day later, Bloomberg reported that the company is currently investigated a possible security breach, which could lead to bad press and alienate Sears’ customer base. The company has said that it is currently reviewing whether or not a breach took place, however Sears’ spokesman Howard Riefs has said that there is no information currently to suggest that Sears and its customers have been affected by a breach.
Since Edward Lempert assumed the role of CEO in January 2013, the company has been working to return to profitability, primarily with its Shop Your Way program and its Integrated Retail platform. While Lempert acknowledges that these strategies are costly, he says that this past year is proof that Sears’ customers are becoming more engaged and that the retailer is starting to see some positive results. “For the full year 2013, sales derived from Shop Your Way members grew to 69% of total Sears Full-line and Kmart sales, up from 59% last year. Our online and multi-channel businesses grew 10% over the prior full year. The investments we made throughout 2013 are enabling us to learn more about how our members want to shop so that we can develop deeper relationships with them and provide them with access to the widest possible assortment of products and services.”
Despite the losses of the recent quarter, Lempert argues that the company is right where it needs to be to start seeing the results of its transformation into a “member-centric” retailer. Following the release of the company’s fourth quarter results, Lempert wrote a letter to the company’s shareholders in defense of its current strategies that many critics believe are causing Sears’ stores to fall into disrepair. Rather than focusing on décor and fixtures in its brick-and-mortar stores, the company has been investing its money into technology to provide its customers with omni-channel initiatives, including its Shop Your Way App and its recently launched curb-side pick-up. In fact, it is because of these investments that Sears is “headed in the right direction in important ways, Lempert says. “I believe the entire retail industry is headed to where we are already are.”
In this letter, he cites a Wall Street Journal article that addresses the changing retail landscape, in which consumers are turning online to browse and using brick-and-mortar stores as a place to pick up what they found online. The company’s Shop Your Way platform, Lempert says, has been preparing the retailer for these changes and is building stronger relationships with its customers. For Sears, digital and integrated retail are the answer to customers’ changing shopping habits and are the investments putting Sears ahead of other retailers working to revamp their own business models.
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