Kohl's CEO states "Digital Business Bringing Us Down" and plans to refocus on stores

[ClownLoach]

Here's another example of a retailer realizing they're spending too much time and energy on unprofitable online sales. Unfortunately they have done a lot of damage ignoring the stores for years to find ways to lose money online. They're also going to pull back from running a store that seems to be almost all store brands...

Although they have a lot of work to do undoing the damage of treating the stores like meaningless warehouses for e-commerce fulfillment for years, they do have the advantage that the majority of their fleet isn't in dying malls. So they have a better chance of fixing their issues. The department store industry is failing because they have the wrong product, wrong brand image, wrong operational focus (e-commerce), wrong traffic trend and wrong location. Four of those five are easy to fix... As we've seen, even if you try to address the first four being in a dying mall means you're still doomed.

It's nice to hear another CEO realizing that Wall Street is wrong. Leave the US and you don't see e-commerce being prioritized over the Retail 101 basics of clean and well stocked stores priced appropriately with good service. Malls are full outside the US. Go to Canada and you'll see malls jam packed with stores... I've brought that up to executives who have had too much of the Wall Street Kool-aid to drink and they just say that "those markets haven't caught up with US innovation." Funny because there are Amazon trucks everywhere, but few if any vacant storefronts. Outside of the US, retailers have realized that they can peacefully coexist because they serve different purposes. Here, Wall Street is creating a war that is only being won by the computer hardware and software companies that sell billions of dollars of equipment and systems to retailers who can't afford them (and they will be obsolete before they ever recoup the investment).

I think there are more people realizing that these banks who are all heavily invested in Amazon and other e-commerce tech companies are conflicted. The banks are constantly demanding that retailers head down the path of financial ruin with incredibly costly and ultimately unprofitable e-commerce ventures that suck all of the needed investments out of the stores and do not deliver acceptable return on investment. Meanwhile their tangible assets, the stores, lose value as they're neglected and they decay from lack of investment, and the business in store is damaged or moves sideways to the lower margin, higher labor cost e-commerce fulfillment. E-commerce should be focused on as an interesting supplement that brings in (validated) new customers only, because it isn't a suitable replacement for retail operations.

https://www.retaildive.com/news/kohls-f ... 0Weekender

[storewanderer]

I went to Kohls this weekend, it was the only department store I went to, and didn't have a good experience at all. The store was a mess and they only had two cashiers working. They have more freight than the past couple holidays but still have some major merchandising issues in a lot of departments. I like how they have moved Christmas decor up to the front of the store, that is a positive change, but their items/prices are so off I'm not sure how well it'll do.

When I went up to pay, there were about 10 customers waiting in line with 2 cashiers and the young cashier was doing hard sell on Kohls credit cards to everyone- like if a couple came up she would ask if they BOTH had a card and if not would try to sign the one who didn't have one up. Then I watched two different customer groups trying to redeem either expired or "not yet good" Kohls cash which caused delays and confusion. The older cashier who is one of the managers was trying to move the line quickly and kept telling the young one she needed to "get off the register" and when I showed her a coupon they had emailed me I guess my screen wasn't bright enough and it didn't scan immediately and she got so impatient with me she manually took the percent off my transaction and said "forget your coupon I don't have time for trying to scan it I just gave you the 30% off" - but just seemed aggravated about it. Threw my items in the bag the way I'd throw a used kleenex in the trash (crumpled up and thrown). I appreciate efficiency but this was not a good interaction.

There was also a line of about 14 people at the Amazon Returns/Customer Service area (all appeared to have Amazon returns) and only one clerk there. Again the clerk seemed frustrated and the customers seemed more frustrated.